16. ~Caspian~

“Along with untreated trauma, both with what happened that night and what Jett Bane subjected her to beforehand while she was attending Vista Ridge. The long-term isolation also hasn’t helped, neither has her not properly processing her grief, or the abandonment issues associated with her father leaving.” I finished reporting Doctor Granger’s notes on Skylar’s condition, after I’d met with her just before her third session with Skylar in her room. Her room, which she hadn’t left once since I’d come home that day after Caleb had communicated his concerns about her mental health and I’d informed her that Doctor Granger would be paying her a visit that very night.

She was angry with me for keeping her here, as well as the force I’d initially used to do so.

And making her see this renowned specialist was another thing to add to that.

Rather than seeing it as an act of care and concern for her wellbeing, she’d seen it as a slight, and as an intrusion.

Fortunately, I was schooled on dealing with those in dire straits who denied the necessary help, through my experience with Bastian over the years.

“Jesus,” Caleb exclaimed at my report.

Bastian tapped his fingers on his coffee cup. “At least she’s actually cooperating. We wouldn’t know all of that from Granger if she wasn’t.”

“She could just be playing the game,” I warned.

“In a bid to get us off her back?” Caleb asked.

“That and to draw us into a false sense of security to have us believe she’ll break from her obsessive mission to eliminate Jett.”

“Take it at face value for now,” Bastian said.

I arched an eyebrow.

“Challenging her is gonna just add pressure when she’s already struggling—more than we realized.”

“Kid gloves,” Caleb told me. “More than that, actually. Animosity and pain toward her from the two of you needs to be let go of and put to rest. What happened can’t be altered and let’s not forget that, unlike me, she had to leave and she was literally forced to by her father. She’s traumatized and in a whole lot of pain and drowning in the dark. And who the hell knows how to deal with that better than the three of us? She needs care, attention, and love. Can the two of you handle that? No more treating her like a threat, Cas? I mean, you can still keep an eye on that side of things, just quietly and without it impacting her. And Bastian, no treating her as somebody who wronged you. You know damn well that went both ways.”

“I’ll see to it,” I agreed.

“Good, because she needs us right now.”

Bastian gave a nod. “She does, yeah. Being in that hopeless state of mind… I know what that’s like. As much as you hate it at the time, you need the support and care.” He smiled out at me. “Just like I was fortunate enough to get in spades over these last couple of years when I was struggling through everything.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you through it this time,” Caleb told him.

“It doesn’t matter, I was,” I threw at him.

He winced.

Bastian held up his hand to me, then laid his other on Caleb’s hand. “I know you had your own painful issues to deal with, Cal. I get it. We just both wish you’d been able to do it here, to pull on us, on the brotherhood.”

“So do I,” he murmured, emotion flickering in his eyes that threatened to undercut the hard edge I was putting out there toward him. “I just… I had to remove myself from the situation. I couldn’t stand infecting either of you with the poison that was running through my veins and taking me over at the time.”

Bastian smiled sadly and gave Caleb’s hand a squeeze. “I get it. I was like that with Cas too. In the beginning.” He grinned out at me. “But he wouldn’t take no for an answer when it came to helping me through all that shit.”

“I’d do nothing less for a brother of mine,” I told him.

“If it helps at all, I did make sure you were taken care of before I took off. I wouldn’t have walked away without making sure of that, B.”

I stilled, my espresso cup halfway to my lips.

“You did?” Bastian asked, clearly so desperate to believe it.

He forgave easily, too easily sometimes. It was very remnant of his relationship with Damien. It was something I had to guard against, I had to ensure that his forgiveness was earned, that it wasn’t going to come back on him or hurt him like it had with Damien so many times over.

And maybe I needed to ensure it didn’t pan out that way for me either when it came to Caleb.

“Yeah, I mean, I led Caspian’s guys to you in that drug den.”

I started. “You were the anonymous tip?”

Caleb’s eyes met mine. “That was me.” He leaned back in his chair, snacking on his Pop Tart, then telling us casually, “It took me several days to track him down and breaking hell knows how many laws, committing a shit-ton of cybercrimes along the way, but I got there.”

“You covered your tracks exceptionally well, I couldn’t determine the identity of the person behind it.”

“I didn’t want to complicate matters through you knowing it was me.”

“You mean, you didn’t want to make it difficult for you to leave,” I bit back.

“It was difficult either way, Cas.”

I scoffed.

Bastian rose to his feet, taking a final gulp from his coffee cup, then telling us, “You two need to work this shit out. All this passive-aggressiveness is a real bitch to be around. I need to study, so I’ll leave you to it. If Sky comes out of her room, let me know, though, yeah?”

“Of course, Bastian,” I assured him.

“Will do, B.”

With that, he put his cup in the sink, then strolled on out, giving the two of us withering looks on his way.

Caleb chewed on his Pop Tart, then asked me with his mouth full, knowing how much I hated when he did that, “So, how do you want to do this?”

I glared at him as crumbs flew everywhere while he talked.

“Swallow your food, for one.”

He did so, then grinned at me. “Just checking if that still bothered you.”

“It does. Bothering me isn’t your best strategy here.”

“I disagree. I need to get under your skin to elicit anything from you, any actual reaction. That’s how shut down you are with me.”

“Do you think you deserve a reaction from me, Caleb? That you deserve anything from me?”

He sighed and shoved a hand through his thick blond hair. “It was never my intention to be gone for so long.”

“And yet, you were.”

“When you tracked me down during those first few months and tried to pull me back in, I wasn’t ready, I still hadn’t gotten a handle on that fucked-up part of me that had been unleashed during that massacre of Jett’s guys. Your reaction to that, to me refusing to come back to you and Bastian… it was fucking brutal, Cas. I couldn’t stomach it.”

“So you decided to drop off the face of the earth?”

“I had to purge all that shit. And the disappointment and pressure from you wasn’t helping, so I had to force a complete disconnect. With your reach and resources, the only option for me was to disappear for a while, to take on that alias of Clark Rothchild. Turned out, after a few months, I could’ve dropped that alias, because you stopped looking altogether, just gave up on me.”

“That’s what you think?”

“It’s what happened.”

“I had to stop, Caleb. It was driving me insane not having you here, then losing track of you. You did worse to me, you went on to live your life for two years without a care for what was taking place back here, you completely moved on with no looking back.”

“That’s not true.”

“Please. I know what you were up to now, thanks to Dante’s inside man. I know you even went the vigilante route on your own, despite the slap in the face it was to us and our Jackals operations.”

“That wasn’t for me.”

“What?”

“That vigilante stuff was necessary. It wasn’t me unleashing all my shit. It had a definitive purpose. I did it for you.” I watched as he pulled his phone out of his aviator jacket. He scrolled on it for a moment, then slid it across the table toward me.

I snatched it up and found a list of forty odd names.

“Look into them. Run them by Mancini too. You’ll get it then.”

“Or how about you just tell me?”

“And you’ll simply believe me? Your attitude would seem to indicate otherwise. Making a fight and struggle out of every little thing I say and do.”

I sucked in a breath and took a step back. “Tell me. I’m listening.”

He fired up a smoke, glaring at me for a moment, knowing I didn’t like it in the house. Little bastard. I gave him a look, letting him know he’d be punished for that. He merely smirked, clearly trying to remind me that he’d only like that.

He was the only one who could withstand my wrath.

I wasn’t used to it anymore, to handling it, with him having been gone for so long.

He took a long drag, then settled in and told me, “During my time at the church, one of the new parishioners came to me informing me that they’d heard your name around the city where I was at. This guy was somebody who was trying to repent for a life of crime, owning several gambling dens that attracted some of the worst assholes in the city. When he’d been in the process of closing down one of his gambling dens, that last night there he’d heard a bunch of people talking about you. The parishioner himself recognized my name in connection with yours and came to warn me.”

“Warn you about what?” I asked, as I grabbed an ashtray out of one of the cabinets and put it down in front of him.

“These guys he’d overheard were big-time drug traffickers who’d been approached by Elijah Bane and were given the money and means to move into the arms trade through coming at you. There was a whole plan in the works to take your shipments, to weaken you, Cas. So, I intervened. I tried to turn them, but they weren’t having it, so I took them out. Five of them. That wasn’t the end of it either. I had my ear to the ground after that and stopped a bunch of them. Elijah’s influence was all over the place. The biggest score he almost got was a motorcycle club that had a shit-ton of connections and impressive organization, the means to do a lot of damage to you and Rossun by extension. Fortunately, Elijah didn’t do his research properly when he reached out to them. The president ended up coming to me. He was looking for redemption too and in the process of trying to turn his club legit. He wanted the low-down on Elijah, so I told him the whole deal. Told him all about you too, how you value brotherhood, loyalty, and all that. It turned him to your side and away from Elijah’s quickly. The guy was damned honorable, fortunately. The twenty-five at the end of that list is his club. The rest are people I couldn’t turn and had to eliminate.” He blew out a breath and sank back in his chair. “So, that’s really what my whole angel of vengeance vigilante phase was all about.”

I stared at him for several long moments as I tried to absorb these startling revelations.

He stubbed out his smoke, then pushed to his feet, kicking his chair back and rounding the kitchen island toward me. “I was fighting for you even while we were apart, Cas. I just… I thought you’d given up on me and, honestly, after leaving you, I figured it was what I deserved. I wanted to get better and come back stronger to you, and not be somebody you needed to take care of. I wanted to be your partner, not your charge. I did achieve some of that. I figured my shit out, I became stronger, more focused, I have a successful set of rehabilitation facilities, I did it. But the price along the way was us. And I hate it, I hate that I needed to walk to get all of that done. I hate that I hurt you and Bastian, that I left you, even temporarily.”

I put his phone down on the counter beside me, alongside my espresso cup.

“Why didn’t I hear about this? For me to miss it is unbelievable enough, but Dante too?”

“Because, Cas, I didn’t hesitate when I realized others were out to harm you. I took care of it quickly.”

“And now?” I asked, my voice rough as the words left me.

“And now,” he said, moving so close that I could scent his familiar apple cinnamon through the tobacco. “Now, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Caleb,” I said, shaking my head.

He grasped the sides of my face, urgency spilling from him. “I’m not, Cas. I’m back where I belong, with you, with the four of us. Now, I can keep proving that to you over and over, and you can keep coming at me with all that passive-aggressiveness—and pure aggressiveness too—or you can allow yourself to remember that I’ve always been a man of my word, and trust in it without the need for all that fight.” He stroked his thumbs along my jawline, heat emanating just from that slight, intimate touch. “Either way, I’ll still be standing here with you.”

I removed his hands from my face and his dejected look hit me in the gut as he clearly thought I was pushing him away and going to continue to hold him at arms’ length.

With that in mind, it was all the more startling for him when I actually smiled and reached out, running my fingers through the thick stubble lining his jaw. “I like this.”

“Yeah?”

“Absolutely,” I confirmed, continuing to play with it, and watching with delight as he started nuzzling against my fingers.

“Better than my former clean-shaven look?”

“Mmm hmm.” I showed him just how much as I leaned in and licked along his jaw line.

A sexy groan came from him, the likes of which I hadn’t heard for so long. That, combined with his revelations and his closeness, took me over.

Then I was grabbing his nape, angling him, and crushing my lips to his.

He rose to it right away, and our tongues were tangling in the next moment, lips smacking, teeth gnashing as that long-denied passion between us detonated.

His fingers tangled in my hair, trying to pull me closer still.

“Fuck, Cas,” he moaned as I licked along his full lips, then trailed down across his throat.

He worked to unbutton my white dress shirt. Thankfully, I’d disposed of my tie and suit jacket when I’d first arrived home earlier.

Even still, he was so frantic about it that he couldn’t summon the patience to take it one button at a time, when he was so desperate to touch me skin-to-skin. So, with a grunt, he ripped my shirt open, buttons flying everywhere. He shoved it off my shoulders, then I pulled it down my arms and tossed it across the kitchen, not giving a damn.

His hands were all over my pecs then, running down my abs, all fucking over, heating me everywhere, making my blood roar in my ears.

I shoved his jacket off his shoulders, then he was there ripping his tee off in the next moment, baring his sculpted torso in all its glory.

He lunged at me, knocking me back into the counter as he sucked and bit at my nipples, then made his way down my chest, making me undulate against the counter.

“Fucking missed you,” he was murmuring to himself. “Fucking missed this.”

I normally had control to die for, but that wasn’t with me right now.

I couldn’t take it, it had been far too long.

I needed him. Now.

“No more foreplay,” I growled, wrenching open the belt of my suit pants, popping my fly, and shoving them down to the tops of my thighs.

Caleb stilled with his erotic attentions as he saw my cock had sprung free.

The seductive bastard licked his lips as he stared at it for several intense moments, before looking back up at me and smirking like the little devil that he was.

He lowered himself to his knees and wrapped his hand around the base, drawing a long groan from me.

He held my gaze as he opened his mouth and took the crown into his delectable mouth.

I slapped my hand down on the counter as he slicked his tongue over the sensitive skin, then pulled at my piercings with his teeth, before suckling on them.

“Mmm… that’s it, lovely.”

He had me leaking for him in moments, clearly remembering just the way I needed it from him, he wasn’t missing a beat. And the familiarity of it, the uniqueness of when he and I came together like this, had me further sinking into it all, giving myself over to us.

“Fuck, Cas,” he uttered on a hoarse breath as he started licking up my shaft, while tugging open his jeans and shoving them down. “Missed the taste of you too.”

As I followed his movements, I jolted, watching his cock come into view.

In the next second, I was wrenching him to his feet so I could get a better look. I closed my fingers over his crown and tugged, pulling him closer to me, while the fingers of my free hand explored the ink all over his shaft. I couldn’t believe it. “You tattooed your pride and joy.”

“Your research didn’t tell you that, huh?”

“It certainly didn’t.” I traced the black, red, and golden claws encircling the length of him.

“You like?”

“I adore it.”

“Hot, right?”

I squeezed his shaft, making him hiss. “More than that. It’s making me fucking feral for you.”

As if I hadn’t already been approaching that as it was.

He just had a way about him, something I’d never felt with anybody else.

Only him. Only ever him.

In the next breath, I was dragging him over to the island by his cock, making him squirm and groan for me. And then I shoved him down over it, pinning him there with a hand to his nape, his face smushed into the marble.

I gathered my precum and his until my fingers were nice and slick, then I drew them around his asshole, rimming, then dipping inside, working two inside little by little.

“Yes, shit, Cas. The way you fucking tease me… Christ.”

“It’s gonna be a lot more than a tease. I’m going to reclaim this hot little ass. I’ll fuck you raw, I’ll fuck you hard, make you burn for me, make you a mess for me.”

“Mmm… fuck, yeah. I need you, I fucking need you in me.”

I smirked and twisted my fingers inside him, making him buck on the island, the only thing holding him to it being my hand pinning him down.

I twisted again, opening him up, and being rough about it, just the way he needed it.

I drove deeper, all the way to my last knuckles and hit that sweet spot, curling my fingers against it over and over until he was roaring, bucking, and twisting in my grip.

“No, don’t make me come yet. I need to feel your big, fat cock filling me first. Please, Cas.”

I wrenched my fingers out, making him cry out, then I released my hold on his nape. Fisting his hair, I ripped his head back, forcing him to look at me over his shoulder, as I then thrust my fingers into his mouth.

He started swirling his tongue right away.

“Good boy, slurp them up, choke on your taste.” I stabbed them deeper down his throat until he was spluttering for me, his eyes hooded, as he was pulled under to that headspace where only sensation existed.

Where he was mine for the taking.

In every way imaginable.

I yanked them free, then slathered his dripping saliva all over my cock.

Holding his head steady, making his gaze remain locked on mine, I pushed into his ass.

His eyes rolled back in his head, while he also clenched his teeth as the crown popped through into his tight hole, my piercings scraping his walls in the process. “Been too fucking long,” he ground out, panting from it.

“Want me to get the lube?”

“No. I just… keep doing what you’re doing… I’m just trying not to come.”

I chuckled. “I thought you were in pain.”

“Only the good kind.” He grinned. “You forgot that I can always take you, huh?”

“I’m about to be reminded. Vividly.”

“And brutally?” he asked, hopefully.

I’d missed his sick and twisted side more that I’d realized. Well, more than I’d allowed myself to acknowledge—until now.

I pushed in another couple of inches, then began thrusting slow and shallow.

As soon as he started trying to fuck back on me, sinking into the rhythm, I pulled out to the tip, then slammed in right to the hilt.

He roared and slammed his fists down on the island.

“And brutally.”

I did it again until I was fucking him deep and hard, his body jerking up the island from the force of it, and I yanked on my fistful of his hair to pull him back to me.

His sexy eyes were glazed and drunk on pleasure as he held my gaze through it.

Shocks of pleasure tormented my cock as he squeezed the fuck out of me, greedily demanding more, desperate to swallow me whole.

“Your hungry ass can’t get enough.” I slapped his cheeks in quick succession, delivering a biting sting that only had him fucking back against me like a wild thing. “There’s my pain whore.”

“Yes, fuck, Cas! Fuck!”

I angled my cock and hit his sweet spot head-on.

He lurched and screamed out in ecstasy. “Don’t stop! Don’t fucking stop!”

“Jerk your cock,” I commanded.

He reached down and clamped his hand around his shaft, then started fisting it roughly, losing himself to it as he matched my violent fucking of his sweet ass.

“Good boy, work that cock like the desperate little ass slut that you are for me.”

I jackhammered into his sweet spot until his cries became raspy strained noises.

Then I snaked my hand between us and slapped his balls.

He jolted and choked at the sudden pain.

I released his hair and used both hands to torture them with brutal slaps, jostling them violently.

“Ungh, Jesus Christ!” he cried, slamming his free hand down onto the island over and over as he struggled to endure the conflicting intense sensations.

I squeezed his balls, feeling they were now hot to the touch from my abuse.

I dug my nails into them, making Caleb twist on my cock, driving him out of his mind with him not sure whether he wanted to get away or endure more of my torment.

I resumed my slapping with one hand, jostling his balls roughly.

With the other, I raked my nails down his back viciously, drawing blood all the way down in long red-raw scratches.

“Ah, fuck me! Fuck me! I’m gonna come! I’m gonna come, Cas!”

I twisted my hips, stretching his ass open wider.

And that was it, he roared out, jerking violently, then spurting hot cum all over his fingers and mine around his balls.

“Fuck, yeah,” I grunted, before ecstasy ripped through me and I came, spurting deep inside his ass.

I hadn’t had a release like that for so long, it took me a moment to come down from it and actually pull out.

As I did, I watched my cum trickling down onto his balls and thighs.

Intending to fuck it back in where it belonged, Caleb startled me when he pulled me up short, then spun around to face me.

He gathered his own cum all over his palm and the remnants on his balls, then he tugged me right up against him by my jeans still around my thighs, then slathered his cum-covered hand all over my nose, cheeks, and lips.

Startled, it took me a moment to respond as he stood there smirking at me.

“That’s how it is?”

“That’s how it is, Cas.”

I grinned and slicked my tongue over the cum I could reach, tasting him and swallowing him down.

And then he was there licking it off the rest of my face, and getting my cock hard again already in the process. Fucking shit.

“You like that?” he asked, as he pulled back, then softly stroked my pec.

“I did.”

“Good, because that’s just for starters. Next time, I’ll be the one fucking you.”

I was aware that he’d delved much more into his dominant side since he’d been gone. So, apparently, that hadn’t just been an experiment for him then. It was a previously unexplored part of him—save for a couple of times over the years where I’d allowed it under extreme and one-off circumstances.

“You think you can handle that?” he asked, worry there now that I hadn’t responded right away.

I laid my hand over his on my chest. “You’re back here now, we can figure everything out. Even that.”

“Yeah? So we’re… that wasn’t just fucking to take the edge off… it meant something to you too?”

I squeezed his hand. “Of course. You know we’ve never gone there together without feeling. It’s never just been physical between us. And it never will be.”

“So, we’re good now?”

I smiled down at him. “We’re getting there.”

He sank into me and I wrapped my arm around him, then stroked my fingers through his soft hair. “I missed you. I missed you so much, it hurt, Cas.”

I tightened my hold around him. “I know, lovely. I missed you too, a great deal.”

We stayed like that for a while, until Caleb began to get antsy, as was his usual way. He always needed to be on the move, doing something. We had that in common. Mine was work, his was anything to keep busy, to keep moving.

I turned with him in my arms and took in the state of the counter, some of his blood on it, pools of cum too and some on the tiled floor. “We need to clean this up, or Bastian won’t be happy in the least.”

Caleb chuckled. “Yeah, he hates in when we get it on in common areas of the mansion. Especially the kitchen that he’s always insistent remains sanitized. If Skylar was herself right now, she’d be getting turned on at the sight of it, though.”

“It’s a pity she’s not then.”

“Agreed. Thinking about taking her together again keeps creeping up on me. You too then?”

“Absolutely. How can it not with her living in the same space as us again?”

“After so long too.”

“Give it time,” I soothed, playing with strands of his hair. “She’ll come back to us.”

“We can’t let it be any other way, Cas.”

“I know, lovely. I know.”