The Spiral Down (The Fall Up #2)

“Mr. Alexander. So we meet again.”


“Yeah, but this time, I’m sleeping with your son.” His face flashed red as he slapped his hand over his mouth, turning apologetic eyes my way.

Stunned, I cocked my head in silent question. Henry entertained thousands on a daily basis, yet one conversation with my dad turned him into a bumbling wreck.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that and just keep talking, if that’s all right with you,” John said with more than a hint of humor. “I have to say, when Jackson told me you hired Evan, I wasn’t surprised. He’s the best pilot I’ve ever met, and I took the liberty of including myself in that pool.”

I smiled huge. Praise from a man I respected never got old. Neither did the way Henry’s eyes lit as he looked up at me.

“However, I have to say, you dating my boy is taking stalking to a whole new level.”

Henry finally laughed, and his arms tightened around my midsection. “I wouldn’t have been stalking you at all if I’d known Evan back then.”

“Well, excuse me for not introducing you sooner.”

I chuckled, secretly enjoying the ease with which John was accepting Henry. While my parents knew I’d been with a man, Shannon and I had been done before they’d ever had to deal with it. This would definitely be a first for all of us.

“Anyway…I’ll let you two go. I didn’t mean to…uh, interrupt.”

I grinned. “Sorry about the omelet, John.”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s always next weekend. I’m going to try to get a Diet Coke in your mom and see if I can calm her down. Give her a call in a little while and tell her when you can bring Henry home for dinner.”

I glanced at Henry, one eyebrow raised in question. His only response was a megawatt grin.

“I can do that,” I replied.

“Love ya, son.”

“Love you too.” I hung up, dropped the phone beside me, and then aimed a scowl at Henry.

He sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“For?” I gave not a single damn that he had talked about us sleeping together in front of John. I did care that he’d started to panic when he’d first overheard my conversation.

“You know why,” he replied, pushing up on his arms and then prowling up until his lips were on mine.

“I do know why, but I love hearing you tell me anyway.”

He nipped at my bottom lip and tugged back the covers between us. After slinging his leg over my hips, he settled in my lap, both of our cocks growing hard when they made contact.

He huffed when I didn’t react to his blatant advance. “Fine, because I assumed you were saying something else and, instead of trusting you, I let it bother me.”

I gripped his ass, gently pulling his cheeks apart as I ground him against me. “You have to trust me, Henry.”

“I didn’t freak,” he defended, taking both of our erections in one of his hands. “I can’t change overnight. I only assumed. You can’t be mad at that. Actually, I’d say that’s a huge step for me. And, if you want my opinion, I think you should reward me for such a great effort by rolling over and offering me that sexy ass.”

My eyebrows hit my hairline just as my phone started ringing again.

“Here. Turn it off,” he said, nabbing it off the bed and passing it my way.

Scott’s name flashed on the caller ID. He must have seen the pictures of Henry and me too and was calling to pretend he hadn’t while still covertly conveying his congratulations in a series of coded comments that would require a legend to decipher.

I could call him back.

Powering it down, I asked, “Why isn’t your phone blowing up? The pictures of us, including the ones from a few months ago, are all over the place, apparently. Don’t you have an agent or someone who should be yelling at you right about now?” I asked, swapping my phone for the bottle of lube on the nightstand.

Henry’s smile split his face like a kid’s on Christmas morning. Snatching the lube from my hand, he replied, “Because I know better than to leave my cell phone on when shit is about to hit the fan. And also because it was my publicist who released the pictures of us from two months ago in the first place. They’ve probably been working all night.”

My head jerked in surprise. “What?”

Pushing up on his knees, he swirled his finger in the air, motioning for me to roll over. I wasn’t about to argue.

Careful to tuck my straining hard-on for fear of breaking it, I flipped beneath him.

“Jesus, this fucking ass,” he murmured, gliding his lubed fingers down my crack. “This is going to be so much better than the first time I was inside you. You’re still okay with bare, right?”