Aftermath Read online

  “Humiliating me in public wasn’t revenge? I find that difficult to believe.”

  A line appeared between Randolph’s eyebrows. “I mean it, Maxmillian. None of that back there was about making you look bad. What’s humiliating about being honest? Isn’t that what you LGBT types are always on about? No shame in being who you are?”

  Max heard a buzzing in his ears and told himself to calm down.

  “Being gay is a problem in the security business for reasons we’ve already discussed,” Randolph said. “I don’t have anything against queers. It’s all about business for me. And so is this. You’re gay, so let’s make this work for us like you said you could.”

  “I said that in anticipation of a handful of clients balking should they ever learn the truth. You just revealed personal information about my partner and me without discussing it with us. To everyone,” Max snapped. “That’s a gross breach of trust. Would you care to bet how much speculation is now swirling about my proclivities? About Ethan’s? He’s an employee, not management. You had no right to drag him into this.”

  “Alright, so I didn’t think about the impact on him. I apologize, Maxmillian. My bad.”

  “Your bad.” Max spat out the words. “Your flippancy and inability to fully appreciate the damage you’ve created tonight is pushing me to reconsider our deal, Axel.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Randolph argued, his chest puffing out. “You wouldn’t walk away from this. You’ve got too much at stake to turn back now. There’s Europe, remember? We’re sticking it to your father.”

  Max thought of his earlier conversations with Ethan, about how much the two of them had agreed they would sacrifice to make this work. None of that seemed relevant now, and the allure of proving himself to his father had faded thanks to Ethan’s insistence that it wasn’t a measure of his success.

  “You broke my husband’s privacy and mine,” he said coldly. “I advise you not to call my bluff, Axel.”

  “Jesus.” Randolph threw his glass, but it bounced off the carpeted floor and rolled away, robbing him of the drama. “Maybe I screwed up. Okay, I did! I admit it. I fess up. But listen.” He stormed up to Max, suddenly eager. “I’m in this to make another fortune. I’d partner with Satan if he had a good product and gave me decent points.” When Max didn’t smile, Randolph grew serious again. “It’s all business. It will always be business with me and this is no different. Word would have gotten out anyway. Too many people know about you and Ethan. We couldn’t have kept a lid on it for much longer. You anticipated it yourself. But this way we get ahead of it and we control the narrative. It won’t be some dirty secret we tried to hide. We’ll make it work for us. You being a gay man isn’t a liability. Don’t you see?” He smiled widely, triumphantly. “It’s a selling point!”

  Max narrowed his eyes. “You are not exploiting my personal life for profits.”

  “Why not? We’re all selling something, aren’t we?” Randolph waved expansively. “This whole shebang is a sales pitch for the media.” He patted his own chest. “I put on a show because it gets me media coverage. They’d rather cover a businessman with personality than one who’s boring and stuffy. I’m not the only billionaire in the U.S., but why am I a household name when the others aren’t? Because I’ve packaged myself, and that’s what successful companies do.” He pointed at Max with an arched brow. “You can’t argue with that.”

  Of course, he couldn’t. When he’d convinced Ethan to leave Indiana and move in with him, he’d told Ethan a variation of the same thing: “We are all prostitutes. The shame isn't in selling yourself, but in selling yourself for less than you are worth.” Was it time for Max to put his money where his mouth was? How much was The Elite Poole Worldwide worth? Max’s privacy? His pride?

  “The world is a different place from when I was your age,” Randolph went on excitedly, as though he’d sensed Max was wavering. “Being different now is trendy. LGBT this and LGBT that sells when it’s in the right market. Now, previously I didn’t believe that market could exist within the personal security industry. But clearly there’s a first time for everything. Not to mention you’ve already made good inroads into the entertainment community. Something like this could corner that entire market, Maxmillian. Think about it! Celebs love to support causes—”

  “I’m not a cause.”

  “No, that was a poor choice of words,” Randolph acknowledged. “They love to support human beings, is what I meant. And let’s be honest—when the package is pretty, that just makes it even easier for them to do so.” He gave Max a significant look, which far from flattered him. Randolph sighed at his expression. “Maxmillian, The Elite Poole Worldwide could become the darling of the entertainment industry. A security firm manned by highly skilled, attractive agents, run by a man and his husband who both look like they could be models or movie stars themselves? Hollywood is going to make up reasons to hire us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a movie deal comes out of this, though that’s not our goal, I know,” he added when Max’s brows knitted. “Our business, I promise you, will be huge. The marketing will be done for us. Think of the money we’ll save. And it requires nothing more than being who you are.”

  But it wasn’t as simple as that and they both knew it.

  “I’m not using my sex life to market my company.” Max felt ill merely from speaking the words, surely the last he thought he’d ever utter. “There’s no taking back what was said tonight, but I can promise you, Axel, that we will not be capitalizing upon it the way you intended. I sell the service of personal protection. That’s it. The world has no right to anything else from me or my husband.”

  “I’d say it’s too late to stick your head in the sand, Maxmillian. As you said, I can’t take it back. It’s in the zeitgeist, and speaking as a man who knows how to work the media—” Randolph shrugged. “You, Ethan, and The Elite Poole Worldwide are about to become very popular. I’ll have my agent call you.” He winked. “You may end up needing one.”

  ~~~~~

  The drive home from the party was an uncomfortable one, to say the least. ‘Uncomfortable’ might have been too bland a word to describe the tension that filled the interior of the Mercedes and threatened to choke Ethan. Stress-inducing or traumatizing were closer to being apt.

  “So, he thinks he’s helping us?” he asked again, still incredulous after Max had related his conversation with Axelrod Randolph to him. “By publicly outing us?”

  “He thinks he’s marketing The Elite Poole Worldwide.”

  Max spat out the words as though they were bullets and he had a target. He likely did, at least in his mind.

  “Does he think we’re going to turn into a business for gay clients? That we’ll be the go-to company for anyone in or out of the closet?” Ethan wiped his damp palms on his pants. “Obviously I don’t have a problem with people like us, but this sounds like it’ll pigeon hole us rather than expand our market.”

  “He said nothing about exclusivity, and if he had, he would have regretted it.”

  Ethan shot Max a quick, worried glance. His dark-haired husband was pissed. Randolph was lucky he’d been given a tongue lashing and nothing worse. Ethan wasn’t one to condone violence, but a fantasy of Max roughing up Randolph gave him a tiny measure of pleasure.

  “I don’t like this,” Ethan murmured, almost to himself. “It’s putting the focus on the wrong things about The Elite Poole. But if there’s anyone who can make this work, it’s you,” he added quickly. “I’m not just saying that, Max. I’m worried, but only a little. I’m confident you’ll figure out how to make this work for us.”

  “I can’t change what happened tonight.” Max’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “My entire life—thrown out there as an afterthought or the punchline of a joke, as if my right to privacy were a non-issue.” Max took a turn too sharply, forcing Ethan to clutch the edges of his seat. “I built this company into what it was, dedicated my life to it, and all of that will be ignored because of who t
he hell I prefer to kiss.”

  Max didn’t raise his voice. The fury in his quietly spoken words was enough to send a chill down Ethan’s spine.

  “The company is still successful, Max. That hasn’t changed.”

  “Success is measured by the perception of outsiders, Ethan. Don’t you dare tell me The Elite Poole hasn’t lost value as a protection agency because its owner can now be called a shirt-biter.”

  Ethan sucked in his breath, dismayed. But he couldn’t blame Max for his anger. Randolph had taken something from Max tonight. He’d robbed him of his privacy and his right to choose how The Elite Poole was seen in the world.

  “What if Axel is right?” he asked hesitantly. He winced when Max visibly tensed, but Ethan continued. “What if this is an extra edge that helps us grow? And what if it helps other industries? Normalizes things, which I can’t believe is still necessary in the twenty-first—”

  “The Elite Poole isn’t a social organization, Ethan,” Max snarled. “We don’t exist to push social agendas. I don’t care what they are. We’re a personal protection agency. That’s all. There are plenty of other organizations dedicated to furthering the rights of the LGBT community. My company doesn’t need to be a trailblazer in anything besides security. Don’t try to justify what Randolph did. He threw us under the bus, and despite what he claimed, he did it partly for revenge. He still wants to make his fortune, but if he can punish me for defying him then all the better.” Max cursed beneath his breath. “He beat me. That’s all there is to it.”

  Shocked, Ethan began, “I think you might be blowing this—”

  Max pointed a finger at him, his blue eyes as icy as an Arctic tundra. “Don’t finish that sentence. Not tonight, Ethan. Not now.”

  Ethan swallowed hard. He could have argued. He didn’t deserve to be subjected to Max’s anger. But he understood what was going on. He understood perhaps better than Max did.

  The silence in the Mercedes became stifling. Max’s profile was set in stone, and he drove aggressively, obviously eager to reach the privacy of their home. Ethan would have been panicking at this point, except he knew better.

  Max seethed like an open wound. It was one that hurt Ethan, too, because he wanted to help and to comfort, but he didn’t know how to. Max, while undeniably loving, tended to close himself off as soon as he felt vulnerable. Weakness was a threat, as was any situation or person that contributed to that feeling. To accept sympathy or comfort from Ethan would suggest, at least in Max’s mind, that he wasn’t strong enough to handle things on his own.

  It was nonsensical and it frustrated Ethan, but he knew better than to let it show. Max was better than he used to be. When Ethan had first met him, the dominant man had been a walled off island. Since then, a bridge had grown between them. Max was more willing to discuss what upset him and he smiled more frequently, which Ethan proudly took credit for. But Max’s personality hadn’t changed, nor did Ethan want it to. He’d fallen in love with the commanding, confident, and unflinching aspects that made up Maxmillian Poole the man. But along with that power came a degree of certainty that Max knew what was best for himself.

  Even if maybe he didn’t.

  Ethan silently drummed his fingers on his knee, chewing on the questions he wouldn’t ask. He was a part of this drama, too. He was justified in wanting to know what was going to happen now that the world knew he was in a romantic relationship with the owner of The Elite Poole Worldwide. During Randolph’s speech and immediately afterwards, Giuliani and two other agents had helped shield Ethan from being found by the media and they had escorted him out of the event to wait for Max at valet. Even in so short of time, Ethan had felt hounded. He worried how much worse the situation would become in the days to come, and how Max would react to it.

  But as Max had demanded, Ethan kept quiet. This wasn’t the time for a meaningful conversation about their future. Max was in a different headspace than him, no doubt calculating ways to minimize damage to the business and to their reputations, planning the phone calls he needed to make, the press releases he needed to have written.

  The tires squealed as Max pulled up to the condo valet.

  Or maybe Max wasn’t in business mode just yet. Ethan swallowed as the tension in his body began to evolve into something he knew very well.

  They rode up to the condo in silence, the pressure building in the elevator as though only an act of violence could relieve it. Ethan dared to put his back to the wall and face Max, wordlessly challenging his dark-haired lover to acknowledge him. Sapphire eyes slid to him and their gazes locked. Ethan felt incinerated where he stood, as though he were being stared down by an intimidating stranger. The doors opened and Max strode into the hallway, moving with unstoppable momentum.

  Max let them into the condo and tossed the car keys onto the sideboard, the metal hitting with a sharp, discordant rattle. Ethan closed the door behind him and leaned against it, watching as Max stalked across the foyer and paused at the edge of the living room. There, he stopped, the broad line of his shoulders rising and falling with unshed emotion. Slowly, soundlessly, as if only then realizing that Ethan hadn’t moved away from the door, Max turned and regarded him with a hooded gaze.

  The dynamic between them had never felt more acute. Ethan didn’t resent it. He reveled in it. He knew they needed it. His head became a sieve, all thoughts and doubts flying out of it like birds startled from a coop, replaced by a certainty about what his role needed to be right now. The party, the consequences of it tomorrow—all of it left his awareness. Instead of holding Max’s dark, fuming gaze, Ethan looked to the floor. He began to undress.

  He listened to Max’s breathing as he shed his clothes, hearing how it quickened and grew harsher as Ethan bared his body. By the time he’d removed his underwear and stood completely naked, Ethan had stripped his identity as well. He was no longer Ethan Winter, Las Vegas bodyguard. He was Max’s. He lowered himself to his knees and then to all fours. He sank even lower to the floor, shoulders dipping and knees spreading in a submissive curl.

  This is all of me. And all of me is yours.

  He averted his eyes as he moved forward, hugging the floor but not quiet touching it with his chest or his cock which had grown stiff the moment their eyes had met in the elevator. He imagined himself as a jungle cat and tried to infuse liquid grace into his movements, keeping as low as he could as he slowly crawled across the condo. His back bowed further. He saw himself in his mind’s eye: spread and low, non-threatening and humble. When he reached Max’s right black Balenciaga shoe, Ethan leaned forward and pressed his lips to the polished leather.

  Max inhaled sharply.

  It was natural for Ethan’s eyes to fall shut as he rubbed his cheek reverently across the top of the expensive shoe. He kept his chest down, ass in the air, as he curled his hands around the heel and toe of Max’s shoe and worshipped it with his face and lips, inhaling the smell of the leather and polish, scents that he associated with masculinity and power. Wealth didn’t impress him, but he understood that Max viewed it as an aspect of his ability to dominate. So Ethan respected it for that reason alone. He extended his tongue and lapped slowly, worshipfully, across the swell of the toe box, his cock growing harder with each lick. As he hovered atop the laces, a great neediness arose in him. He extended his tongue and dragged the tip of it, lace by lace, up the shoe as though he were licking up the ladder of Max’s spine. At the top, at the tongue of the shoe, he tilted his head and gently kissed the hem of Max’s pant leg.

  The garment cost nearly as much as what Ethan earned in a paycheck. It was butter soft against his lips and yet crisp at the creases, an edge of power shoring up the luxury. He brushed his lips up the sharp crease just as though it were a line on Max’s body, traveling higher and higher until he crouched at Max’s feet.

  From above, he heard a sound—a soft, nearly inaudible puff, as if Max had parted his lips. Sliding one hand to curl around Max’s muscular calf while the other cupped the heel of his shoe,
Ethan arched his back to bring his hips forward, until the tip of his damp cock hung suspended above the toe of Max’s shoe. There, he waited, head bent, a supplicant begging wordlessly for direction.

  Warm fingers combed through his hair. “Do it,” Max ordered, his voice deep in that sexy way that told Ethan he was as into this scene as he was. Ethan shivered at its ragged edge. “Fuck my shoe.”

  Ethan groaned softly and pressed his forehead to Max’s thigh in gratitude. Keeping his head down, he shuffled forward the final inches that brought his cock into contact with Max’s shoe. The smooth leather didn’t provide much friction, but Ethan was willing to work for this. He would do anything to please this man.

  He spread his knees and rolled his hips to rub himself against Max’s shoe, fucking it on either side, on top of it, across the laces—using the various positions to rotate his hips and hopefully provide a visual feast to the man watching him do this from above.

  “Do you think another man would take your place?” Max murmured as he traced the top of Ethan’s ear with a fingertip. “A dozen men? Are there a hundred who would beg for the honor of fucking a piece of leather just because it belongs to me?”

  “Yes,” Ethan whispered, eyes clenched shut, trembling at the exchange of power. When it happened it was always a rush. “There are thousands who’d gladly take my place.”

  “Flattering,” Max chided, though he didn’t sound irritated. “It doesn’t matter. A thousand men on their knees wouldn’t be as satisfying as commanding you to do this.” The finger slid down his cheek and hooked beneath his jaw. Ethan opened his eyes as Max tilted his face up. “You will do everything I say.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Ethan needed to speak the affirmation. “Yes. Everything. Anything. Always.”

  Something angry and hurt momentarily pinched the corners of Max’s blue eyes, as though he doubted himself, before the skin smoothed out again. “Prove it.”