Ifought Don every step of the way back to the estate. I was a big boy. From working construction and exercising during my time off, I had built up a good bulk of hard muscle. I wasn’t a weakling in any sense of the word. And I fought him like a fucking angry badger. I wanted to get back to Casersis and Erastus to ensure Erastus was okay and that Casersis would keep his promise.
No, I wasn’t too worried about Erastus’s life. I was terrified that killing Erastus would break Casersis into a billion pieces, and I wouldn’t have enough duct tape and super glue to put him back together again. The pain I saw in Casersis’s eyes… the rage. It turned my stomach, and I wanted to go back.
But somehow, even though he was leaner than me, Don kept getting the upper hand and dragging me forward. Against my will. Taking my control away from me. No matter how hard I tried, Don kept dragging me away, making sure he did Casersis’s bidding without even asking a fucking question.
He made the one mistake that I usually would never take advantage of. Don pulled me against his chest, thinking he could subdue me if he bound my arms. But I wasn’t having any of that. I brought my knee up and got him square in the balls, grimacing at the pain in his face.
But he let me go on reflex, and I bolted.
And I ran smack into Casersis’s chest.
I wrapped myself around him like a monkey without even a shred of self-consciousness and fisted my hands in his long, silky hair. My voice was a little too gruff, a little too growly, a little too commanding as I asked, “Did you kill him?”
His sigh tickled my oversensitive ear. “No. I healed him and tossed him off our property.”
I froze. Our property? Was I even breathing? What the hell was this? What did he mean by “our” property? I didn’t own anything except for a few clothes, some ancient appliances, and a pair of work boots. Everything else came from Casersis. Wait, maybe he meant his, Beth’s, and Kevin’s property instead of including me in that statement. That made more sense. But I couldn’t get the inclusive, smoky tone of his voice when he’d said that out of my brain.
“Beauty?”
Ugh. I hated it when Casersis derailed my thoughts with a single, soulful word. I sighed and stuffed my face in the curve of his neck and shoulder. I breathed in his scent like a crazed man, confused by how much it comforted me, how it grounded me. My thoughts stilled with that scent, and I wanted to wrap it around me, keep it close forever.
Casersis wrapped his arms about me and held me just as tight as I crushed him to my chest. Safe. For the first time since I’d left the estate, I felt safe. Warm and loved and wanted.
“Dustin.” He squeezed harder and buried his face in my hair, and it felt like a circuit completing. As if I needed that connection to live.
What the fuck?
I had it so bad. Ugh. Just the sound of my name in his calm, possessive voice had electricity skating over my skin like static. Then again, I was attached to him like static cling on clothes when I forgot to use fabric softener. The thought made me chuckle, and I felt Casersis smile against my ear.
“What are you giggling about, imp?”
I shrugged. “Just compared you to clean laundry.”
He pulled away, amusement dancing in his dark blue eyes. “Clean laundry?”
“We’re stuck together like static cling.”
He snorted and pressed a kiss to my temple. I loved it when he did that, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Yet.
“You amaze me, beauty.” He held me a moment more, then nodded toward the estate. “Let us go home. It is rather chilly out here, and I would like to curl up with you since my meetings have been postponed.”
I frowned. “You postponed your meetings?”
He gave me a timid smile as he stepped away. “I could not focus after you hung up on me.” Casersis grabbed my hand and tugged me along in the direction of the estate. “You are much more important to me than a conference room full of stuffed shirts.”
I’d be damned if those words didn’t go straight to my heart. The warmth of those words chased away the late autumn chill, and I tucked closer to Casersis’s side, staring at Don’s back as we made our way out of the forest. Part of me didn’t want to go back. The call of the trees, the call of Mother, lulled me, tugged at my senses until I stopped and touched a tree’s trunk because I had to. Casersis stopped with me, a bright grin transforming his face into a mask of pure, unadulterated joy. “You feel her.”
I shrugged and petted the rough bark. “It’s like a net holding me back. I don’t want to go back inside.”
Don noticed we had stopped and turned, staying a few yards away to give us some privacy. I appreciated it but wanted him gone. Instead of voicing that, I leaned my forehead against the tree and closed my eyes. In the next moment, I had Casersis plastered against my back, his head resting against the trunk next to mine.
“I am sorry for restricting you so, my beauty,” he whispered against my ear. His breath made me shiver. “But unfortunately, now you know one of the many reasons why.”
This time the shiver wasn’t because of Casersis’s breath. I still couldn’t see Casersis as a murderer. He was too nice, too calm. He carried around too much pain. Even hurting me caused him pain, and we barely knew each other. He couldn’t have murdered Erastus’s wife and pups, could he? How could he kill children? It didn’t make sense.
And what was up with the horse skeleton?
Nothing made sense, and I was too weirded out to say anything to Casersis about it until I’d wrapped my brain around everything. At that moment, I didn’t want answers. I wanted normalcy. Or, whatever passed as normalcy when I no longer had a place of my own and played the part of a rags-to-riches kid.
Casersis nuzzled into my neck, and I squeezed my eyes tighter. Having him so close, having him pressed against me, pushing me into the trunk of a tree, should have sent off so many warning bells in my head. I should have been fighting like that angry badger who had kneed poor Don in the nuts. I should have felt trapped. I should have felt anything but safe.
But as Casersis took his hands away from the tree and wrapped them around my waist, as he drew his nose from my neck to breathe in my hair as if he needed my scent to live as much as I needed his, I felt such surrender that it terrified me in the best ways.
No, I didn’t want to leave the forest. I didn’t want to go back to being cooped up in that damned estate. I didn’t want my life to change because of one man. But I couldn’t deny that every time Casersis touched me, it made me want to just let go and lean against him.
I still wanted to rebel. But rebelling almost got me mauled by Erastus. It almost got Erastus killed. It almost made Casersis kill, and that was all sorts of wrong.
With this in mind, I forced my shoulders to drop their tension and leaned back against Casersis’s chest. “Does restricting me mean keeping me in and around the house, Cass?”
I craned my neck to look back at him, and my breath hitched as I found our faces so close that we breathed each other’s breath. Our lips were so close, and part of me wanted to kiss him senseless, but we needed to talk.
Casersis shuddered and had no sense of self-control as he pressed his lips to mine in a chaste kiss before answering. “Does the outside world hold so much for you?”
The laugh that escaped me made me want to lock my jaw against it because it was bitter and ugly. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
He bit his lips together, blanching them a sickly white. He sighed through his nose. “No,” he finally said, “I suppose I do not.”
Frustrated, I pulled away and headed toward Don and the estate. “I want out, Cass. Out of the estate. Off the property. I don’t even care where I go, what I do, so long as I get to spend time away from here.” I glanced back at him. “Do you like staying at home all day every day? Are you a hermit? Or do you go out? Eat at restaurants, go get measured, and get new clothes from Mr. Cipriani, go to work and meetings at your various companies, do things outside this property?”
I snorted when he gave me the confused puppy look, his head tilted and an almost adorable furrow of his brows, his lips pursed. We walked side by side now, and it was easier to look at him as we followed a safe distance behind Don while the trees showered us with the last of their multi-colored leaves. “I… I suppose. But Dustin…”
“I can’t be held captive, Cass. I’m not a chicken you can lock away in a coop. Not if you want me to stay sane. We talked about this.”
When he didn’t say anything, I shoved my hands into my jeans’ pockets and stared up at the sky through the tangle of nearly naked branches. “I know now that you were keeping me hidden for my safety. I appreciate that, and I’m sorry for just haring off like I did. But I need to reconnect with the world. I need to get out. Do things. See people other than security personnel and cleaning staff.” I rolled my head so I could see him and smirked. “I need to feel like myself again, and you have been dressing me up and shit. I’m not a prince to hide away in your castle. I’m a construction worker and a damned good one. I’m a future college student. I like doing things with my hands and playing sports. I’d rather play basketball in the rain than sit around and twiddle my thumbs or sit on my ass and play holovid games. I’m an active, healthy twenty-year-old man, Cass, and this is killing me.”
Casersis gave me an unreadable look. It didn’t help that he remained quiet, didn’t help my roiling gut one bit. How else could I explain this shit to him?
Finally, he closed his eyes and turned his head away from me. I did the same, staring at Don’s back. He fidgeted with his coat a moment, probably to buy time, or he honestly didn’t realize he was doing it. When he said, “I am sorry, beauty,” his voice came so sad and dejected I wanted to wrap him up and cart him away. But what was he sorry about? That he had been keeping me prisoner and making me go batshit crazy? Or was he sorry because he didn’t have any intention of changing my circumstances?
Nothing would ever be the same again. I got that. I did. But damn it. I wasn’t going to just roll over and let anyone keep me prisoner. Not anymore. But could I do that without breaking him? He acted so fragile, and I didn’t want to be mean about it. Not anymore. Not after how cherished he’d made me feel so many times since we’d met.
“I can’t help how I feel,” I murmured. “You know I can’t. We need to come up with some kind of compromise. We need to figure out how to move forward because what we’re doing right now isn’t working. I don’t want to be your kept man. I get that you provide things because you care, but… it’s emasculating, Cass. That’s not who I am or who I want to be.”
