The Next Play: Part Four: the play series | book 1 | part 4 Page 11

  And that was only if he was lucky. If not…

  “Come on, Jonah. You remember that night, don’t you? Bryce gave me hours of footage to go through, but that night was my favorite. You were like a man possessed—or running from something that scared the shit out of him. Don’t you remember the details? Because I do. I remember how wet it made me to watch you screwing those two lucky gals, before Lucas and a certain celebrity athlete showed up.” Her eyes got brighter. “That’s when the real fun began, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, God.” There was a roaring in his ears, his chest so tight he had to fight for his next breath. “You sick bitch.”

  “Why? Because I showed her the truth? You really think she’ll have anything to do with you now that she’s seen just how many it takes to drain you? You really think that wholesome little mouse is ever going to let you touch her again?

  “I wonder if she’ll think her blowjobs pale in comparison. Because in that video—” she snickered as she licked her lips “—his skills are impressive. He deep-throated you like the champ he is, and didn’t even spill a drop when you came like a geyser.”

  There was a huge, gaping hole beneath his feet, his body too heavy to move. He felt like his heart had been ripped straight out of his chest, then clawed into pieces, the pain so staggering he could barely scrape out a hoarse, “Fuck you.”

  Her eyes gleamed with hatred. “Oh, you have. You ruined my life. And now I’ve fucked you right back.”

  “I ruined your life? Jesus, you’re fucking crazy.”

  “If I am, Jonah, you only have yourself to blame.”

  He shook his head, just wanting her gone. “You’re not getting away with this, Val. You’re going to be paying for it for a long, long time.”

  She laughed like someone who’d completely lost their grip on their sanity—but she wasn’t crazy. That was just wishful thinking on his part, so that he didn’t have to face the fact that he’d once been involved with such a twisted, evil bitch.

  He looked at Gabe and didn’t even know how to ask for what he needed. He couldn’t think past the panic that had him in its grip, clawing at his throat.

  “Search that fucking phone,” his best friend clipped at Phil. “And get to wherever she’s been staying before the cops do. I want every bit of digital data she’s collected, either on her own or with help, in our possession as quickly as possible.”

  “What about the prick who gave it all to her?” Phil asked. “My guys will be bringing him down after they’ve finished questioning him and searched his office, but he could have digital copies of everything he gave her at home.”

  “Don’t worry about Everly,” James muttered, looking like one scary son of a bitch. “We’ll deal with his systems.”

  With that settled, Gabriel turned his attention back to Jonah. “Call her,” he said in a low voice. “Right now.”

  Pulling out his phone, he called Jocelyn’s number. “She’s not answering,” he rasped, still holding the phone to his ear as he met Gabe’s worried gaze.

  “I imagine she’s still too busy watching your performance to bother answering your call,” Valerie drawled.

  “Get her the fuck out of here!” James roared at Phil’s men. It was one of the few times Jonah had ever heard the guy raise his voice, and his stomach knotted even tighter. If James thought things were going to hell, then they probably were.

  Ignoring the vitriolic curses Valerie was throwing his way as the agents forced her out of the room, he ended the call and hit the contact number for the front desk at his building. David answered on the second ring, and Jonah’s voice was little more than a croak as he said, “David, it’s Jonah Cartwright. Has Miss Brenna returned to the penthouse yet?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but no.”

  “Okay,” he scraped out, his pulse still roaring in his ears like a fucking engine. “Will you give me a call if you see her?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Thanks.” He ended the call, then tried Jocelyn again, but there was still no answer.

  Phil said his name, and he looked over to find his friend frowning as he lowered his phone from his ear. “I just spoke to the surveillance team on Jocelyn’s building. She was there, but she left less than five minutes ago. They pulled up the tracker on her cell, but it’s pinging inside the apartment. She must have left her phone behind.”

  “Fuck!”

  “We’ll help you find her,” Gabe said.

  “He’s right,” James murmured. “Just stay calm.”

  “Fuck calm,” he shot back, knowing she might have left her phone behind because she’d been too upset to remember it. Either that, or she’d done it deliberately, because she didn’t want his team of investigators being able to use her signal to track her location.

  “You lying bitch!” The guttural roar came from out in the hallway, just beyond the door to James’s office. “You told me that video footage was for you. You didn’t tell me you were showing it to anyone!”

  “Is that him?” Jonah demanded, already heading toward the door as he looked over at James. “Is that Everly?”

  “Jonah, man, stay back,” Phil barked. “My men have got this.”

  “That’s fucking him, isn’t it?” he snarled, ripping the door open. The second he set eyes on the blond-haired male being escorted down the hallway by two of Phil’s agents, a red haze of raw, unfiltered rage overtook him. One second he was standing in the doorway to James’s office, and in the next he had Bryce Everly trapped against the wall and was pounding the shit out of him with his fists.

  Curses and shouts came from all around him, but Jonah was too far gone to listen. All he knew was that this bastard had given Valerie the ammunition she needed to rip his life to shreds, and there was no stopping him. By the time Gabe, Phil and James managed to get him off the jackass, Everly’s nose was smashed to the side and one of his eyes was already swollen shut.

  And the cops had finally arrived.

  “Mr. Cartwright,” an officer said to him, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It took over an hour for Arthur Hanson, one of the city’s top lawyers and a good friend of Gabriel’s, to get Jonah released from the police station. Thankfully, they didn’t book him, but the entire clusterfuck of an afternoon had cost him valuable time when it came to Jocelyn.

  He gave Arthur a hasty “Thanks” and a firm handshake, and then, with his keys in his hand, Jonah ran all the way to the upper parking level, where one of the many messages Gabe had sent him said that he could find his Audi. His chest felt like it was splintering, and he drove like a madman the entire way to Rey and Mitch’s house, knowing damn well that he was already too late. Jocelyn almost always had her phone close by, so there was little chance that she hadn’t seen the video before she left her apartment.

  He kept trying to call her from the Audi, same as he’d been doing for the last ten minutes, even though he knew she didn’t have her phone on her. He hit the steering wheel in frustration when her phone would no longer let him leave a message, her voicemail full, and nearly got hit by an Explorer when he ran a red light, his tires screeching as he roared to a stop in front of her best friend’s house.

  There weren’t any cars in the driveway, but that didn’t mean they weren’t parked in the garage. Even though the SUV Jocelyn was driving wasn’t there, he knew there was a chance that Rey might know where she was, so he ran up to the door and started knocking. He pounded on their front door so hard that one of their neighbors finally came outside to see if anything was wrong, but no one ever opened up. And while Phil already had someone checking her parents’ home address, just outside the city, Jonah doubted they were there. He’d gotten their cell phone numbers from Phil and had been calling them in between calls to Jocelyn and Rey, but they weren’t answering either.

  He waited at Rey’s for an hour, but when no one showed up, he climbed back into his car, clinging to his last shred of hope
that Jocelyn might actually come back to the penthouse to confront him there. Because after the way she reacted to the photo of him with Monica and Jenny, he imagined there was going to be a lot that she eventually wanted to say to him about the video—and none of it good. But he would listen to every word.

  And then he’d fucking beg, for as long and as loud as he needed to, until she finally started to listen.

  As he sliced his way through the Monday evening traffic, he couldn’t stop thinking about Valerie and what she’d done, his gut churning so badly he was amazed he was still holding down the sandwich he’d grabbed at lunch. Hell, it wasn’t any wonder it’d been so difficult for the Atlas security team to uncover anything. She’d been running an inside job on them the entire time, and only now did he see that he should have handed the entire investigation over to Phil right from the beginning.

  When he pulled into his parking space in his building’s underground garage and climbed out from behind the wheel, he almost punched the concrete wall when he saw that the extra space he’d purchased for the Mercedes was still empty. Making his way up to the lobby, he barely managed a nod to David at the front desk, too busy obsessing about the video and what Jocelyn had seen, the whole sordid nightmare playing out in his mind on a continual loop.

  Phil had forwarded him the footage, and since the cops had let him keep his phone while he’d been detained at the station, he’d had plenty of time to run through the video, which eventually ended with him eating Monica out while Jenny sat on Mon’s face…and Lucas’s surprise guest, one of the most famous football players in the country, greedily sucked Jonah’s cock while Lucas fucked the guy in the ass. They’d been one long train of bodies, either kneeling or sprawled over the massive silk-covered bed, only Lucas on his feet at the edge of the mattress, the sounds alone some of the raunchiest Jonah had ever heard. Throaty shouts and moans, accompanied by the slapping of sweat-slicked flesh, until they all came together in a violent rush.

  And Jocelyn had no doubt seen it all. Seen him performing for the sex-hungry crowd, like a goddamn circus act, while he did things with virtual strangers that no woman should ever have to witness her boyfriend doing with other people.

  Jonah called her landline a few times while he rode the elevator up to the building’s top floor, leaving her messages there as well. He knew it was pointless to keep trying to reach her, but he couldn’t stop. Sooner or later, she was going to check her voicemail, either on her cell or at her apartment, and when she did, he needed her to know that he was going out of his mind without her. That he needed to talk to her. Needed to try and explain.

  When he finally made it through his front door, he headed straight for the patio and cranked the outdoor heaters on. Then he stripped down to his tight boxer shorts and dove straight into the heated pool, needing the grind of physical exercise to help him calm down, his body wound so tightly he was a powder keg one spark away from exploding. His right hand still hurt like a bitch from where he’d broken Bryce Everly’s nose, but he didn’t regret it. The son of a bitch had had it coming, and he knew that James would make sure Everly spent some significant time behind bars for his crimes.

  And he was damn grateful that Gabe was dealing with the guards who’d helped Valerie, both at Atlas and the neighboring office building, since he’d have probably ended up having another run-in with the cops if he’d had to do it himself.

  He kept swimming until his muscles started to scream, and then he just kept on going, needing to exhaust himself, because he was dangerously close to falling apart. So he swam lap after lap, figuring when he was finally worn out, he could just drive over to Jocelyn’s apartment and camp out in front of her door for the night. If she wasn’t coming back to the penthouse, then she had to go back home at some point, and he wasn’t leaving until he’d finally managed to get her to listen to him. Until he finally had a chance to say all the things he should have said before, when she’d asked him to just be honest with her. But no, he’d had to act like a miserable coward, and in doing so, had given Valerie the power to drop that fucking bomb on her without him there to explain.

  To talk it through with her.

  To hold her and do his best to make her see the truth: that she was all he needed. All he would ever need, because she was his goddamn heart. The most precious thing in his entire world, and it’d fucking destroy him to lose her.

  Sensing that he was on the verge of a serious cramp, Jonah finally stopped swimming, and as his head broke the surface of the water, he couldn’t believe what he saw. Jocelyn was standing barefoot at the far end of the pool, wearing a pretty white dress with her favorite gray cardigan, her blond hair in a riot of curls around her face. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he’d never swam so fast in his life as he did when he cut his way back across the pool. He climbed out so quickly he nearly ate it on the tiles, water dripping all over the place as he reached out and grabbed her to him.

  “You’re here,” he gasped, clutching on to her so tightly she probably couldn’t breathe. “God, Jace, I was so fucking scared. Phil had someone check out your parents’ place, and I went over to Rey and Mitch’s, but no one has been home. And I must have tried calling a hundred times—you, your parents’ cells, and Rey’s—but no one’s answered.”

  “I’m sorry I worried you. My parents have really spotty cell coverage at my aunt’s place, and Rey and Mitch are on a flight to Chicago because his father had a heart attack.”

  “Shit. That’s awful,” he muttered against the top of her soft curls, her sweet scent filling his head.

  “I know.” Gripping on to his biceps, she tilted her head back and looked up at him. “And I wasn’t ignoring your calls. I forgot my phone at my apartment when I left, and I—”

  He cut her off, saying, “You didn’t think to call me from wherever you’ve been? Or to check your voicemail?”

  “I’ve been at my aunt’s house,” she explained, her calm tone completely at odds with his anxious one. “And I’m sorry I didn’t check my voicemail, but to be honest, I didn’t even think about it. And since I really didn’t want to talk to you about… Well, about everything over the phone, I didn’t call you from her landline. But when I stopped back by my apartment on my way here to pick up my phone, and I saw all your missed calls, I realized how worried you’ve been. I guess I’ve just been so lost in my own thoughts, I wasn’t thinking straight.”

  “God, baby, stop apologizing. I’m the jackass. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  She placed her hand against the side of his face, her brow knitting with concern as she said, “I spoke to the security team watching my building, because they were waiting outside my door when I got there, and they told me what happened. That it really was Valerie, and you’ve had her arrested.”

  His jaw tightened with irritation. “Why the fuck didn’t they call me and tell me they’d found you?”

  “Because I asked them not to,” she said gently, giving him a little smile. “I wanted to be able to come to you, and I think they thought it would be a nice surprise. So they promised not to get involved, so long as I let them follow me over, so that they could make sure I came straight here.”

  “I thought…” A dizzying, overwhelming wave of relief swept through him, and he had to shake his head before he could go on. “I thought you’d run from me for good.”

  She pulled back a bit, still staring up at him with those glistening green eyes, the shy smile on her pink lips making him want to kiss her until she was melting all over him. “No,” she whispered, her soft voice thick with emotion. “I’ve spent the afternoon running toward you, Jonah, not away.”

  Running toward him?

  “What the hell does that mean, sweetheart? And where’s Davey?”

  * * *

  Hating that she’d worried him, Jocelyn hurried to explain. “My parents are staying down in Carmel for the night, with my aunt because it’s her birthday, and Davey is with them.”

  “Why did you
drive him all the way down to Carmel?”

  “Because we need to be able to talk things over, and it’s not the kind of conversation we can have in front of him. And since Carmel is where my parents are, and they’re the only ones other than Rey who I feel comfortable leaving him with right now, I made the trip. I know my mom and dad will keep an eagle eye on him and call us immediately if they even begin to suspect he might have another flare-up coming on.”

  “Okay.” He paused to take a hard swallow, his blue eyes bright with fear. “So you want to talk?”

  “I do.”

  “Fuck, Jocelyn, you can’t leave me,” he growled, clutching her hips in his hands, looking so terrified it broke her heart.

  “Hey, I’m not,” she assured him, pressing her hand over the heavy pounding of his heart. “I couldn’t.”

  “Yeah?” he whispered, searching her face, and she hoped he could see the truth of her words as he studied her expression.

  When she’d received the video from Valerie that afternoon—after stopping by her apartment to grab a few more things for her and Davey—and the gut-wrenching footage had started to play, her heart had twisted so sharply she thought she might die. It’d been a piercing, excruciating pain, and she’d fallen down on her ass on her kitchen floor, her wet eyes glued to the screen as she watched the man she loved in the middle of what could only be described as an orgy. Watched him do such intimate things to other women she’d nearly vomited from the hurt. He was so virile and shatteringly beautiful, she wasn’t surprised that Monica and Jenny, as well as the ripped male she recognized as a famous athlete, had been desperate to be with him.

  And then, just when she’d thought she couldn’t take any more, Jonah had finally lifted his face from between Monica’s thighs, giving Jocelyn her first clear view of his expression, and her breath had caught with a gasp. Instead of being filled with ecstasy, he’d looked…remote. So blank, she’d wondered if he even saw the attractive women in front of him. Or the gorgeous man lying on his back between his legs, sucking down every brutal inch of Jonah’s long, thick penis. Did he feel the lust? The pleasure? What was going through his head as he finally hammered his cock even deeper into the man’s mouth and came? In that moment, he’d looked almost…broken. Though to the cheering crowd, she knew he must have seemed like nothing less than a stunning sex god. But she loved so much more than that striking exterior. Loved so much more than the magnificent body and impressive cock that made her come so hard she lost all concept of reality.