Page 2 of Go Deep

“I’ll be smarter next time.”

She leans in, her blonde waves grazing my bare arms. Her tits are practically jumping out of her top, begging for a feelsie. I’m not the least bit tempted, but that’s another story, one I keep filed away, buried down deep, just like my regrets. “Good. Not that I mind getting you naked and oiled up first thing in the morning.” Her glossed lips curl into a seductive smile. “How about a quickie before work?”

Only seconds before, my dick had been as limp as a cookedstrand of spaghetti. But those devious fingers creeping under the starched white sheet make it spring to life faster than a shot of adrenaline to the heart after an overdose. Okay, it’s not just the fingers. More specifically, notherfingers.

Once my eyes slam shut, X-rated images flash through my now lust-filled mind, images I’d conjured up for weeks on end of the one whose fingers I really wish were stroking and sucking my cock right now.

Gabe Kelly, the star quarterback for the Cincinnati Crusaders. I’d always thought he was hot as hell with his ice blue eyes, sexy dimpled smile that makes him look like a combination of angel and devil, and thick dark hair that’s always styled to look like he’s been fucked six ways from Sunday. The fact that he recently came out on national television ups his hotness factor about a hundred-fold because of the kind of confidence and fuck-all attitude it took to actually say the words.

But those thoughts, images, and fantasies, the ones that keep me up all night, my own personal highlight reel that loops when I’m left to my own devices…they’re dangerous. They can crush me and destroy my livelihood.

I didn’t get my position as the top investment manager in the country by accident. I’ve made damn good use of my finance degree over the past decade. I’m the best at what I do, and every power player in the financial world knows it. I also know that everything I’ve built rests on a fractured foundation of lies and dirty secrets, and if they’re exposed, my life as I know it will be over.

It won’t matter that I’m the best.

It won’t matter that I’ve generated insane returns for my clients, year after year.

Narrow minds don’t give a shit about facts.

They only care about perception.

Case in point, my father, the powerful U.S. Senator from Ohio, Michael Castro.

He’s the reason why I push so hard to exorcise any displays of weakness. He’s the reason I was able to land on my feet after the disastrous end to my NFL career. He’s also the reason I’m so closeted I could quite possibly literally exist in another realm.

And that’s why I keep myself buried balls deep in pretty much any women who crosses my path and flashes me the come-hither look.

Because I’m not willing to sacrifice any more than I already have.

Lies, lies, and more lies.

They just snowball, gathering mass, speed, and force.

Until the day when they’ll finally flatten me.

“Vince, we’re a family. We help each other. I didn’t ask you for anything when I helped you launch that company of yours. I did it because you’re my son, and I love you.”

I rub the back of my neck. “Dad, I want to help you. I just don’t think it’s smart for me to get involved with something so high-profile. I don’t want to alienate any potential clients. I have to stay impartial, or I’ll lose business. Not everyone thinks like you.”

My father narrows his eyes at me. “You mean, like us.”

“Right. Like us.” I choke out the words, my stomach knotted like a damn lanyard.

“And don’t forget that it’s in large part because of me and my connections that you even have a business to run, Vince.”

If I hadn’t realized it before, my fate was pretty much sealed after that conversation. The one I’ve replayed in my mind since we first had it a few months ago. The one I’d been avoiding for my entire life.

How I’d managed to escape it for as long as I did is beyond me.

But the words have been spoken. The request has been made.

If I don’t accept the terms, I lose everything.

Including any shred of control I managed to grab after my life turned upside down with my career-crushing body slam.

There’s no escape from my reality.

I wonder if it’s worth all I’ve given up.

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