Imaginary Lover [The Doms of Sybaris Cove 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  “Where do we start? Handsome, charming, charismatic, most of them are Doms. They all have visible Taino tats so I have to assume they have them in areas that would only be seen if they were naked as well.”

  “Taino tats? That’s interesting.”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

  Jan sighed. “Well, for one thing, the origins of the people aren’t entirely known. They probably originated in the South American countries. We do know a few things. They were sea bearing Indians, and were enemies with their neighbors, the Caribs, another Indian tribe. When Columbus arrived, there were five kingdoms of Taino Indians. Three hundred years later, after Spain and other countries had colonized the area, the cultures were mixed, and the European diseases had nearly wiped out any remaining pure Taino people.”

  Jan took a sip of her drink. “It’s fascinating that the Durantes and Raleighs identify with that culture over two hundred years later. Do you know why they do?”

  Ivy shook her head. “Not really. The only thing I ever heard was that Iago and Agapito were obsessed with the culture and studied it. They started the tradition of the tats, or maybe their sons did. I’m not sure.”

  Jan nodded, then took out a pen and scribbled in the margins of her typewritten papers. “I’ll look into that further. It might give me a clue about the four names I found. What else can you tell me about the men of this generation?”

  “Most of them work at Phoebe’s Playthings,” said Ivy. “They hold upper management or executive positions. A few have gone their own way, including Estevan, but they’re generally thought of as traitors or lazy by the others.”

  “It’s a multi-million dollar corporation,” said Jan. “I’d imagine the families are expected to stay loyal to it.”

  “Indeed. Asa, especially, is ruthless about protecting the company and its name.”

  “I can’t think of too many instances where a company as large as theirs was started as a mail-order business. I did some research on it. They’re one of the largest manufacturers and retailer distributors of sex toys, fetish gear, and club wear in the country. And they have a large market share overseas.”

  “Which explains why Asa and Tim don’t like their nephews and cousins taking jobs outside of it.” Tim Raleigh was the other CEO of Phoebe’s Playthings, but he didn’t have as much of a public presence as Asa.

  “What about those nephews? Alaina is a submissive to two of them. Tell me about Jeff Raleigh and Taj Durante.”

  “The same as all of them,” said Ivy. “Nice enough to talk to, I suppose, but company men all the way.”

  Jan frowned. “I take it you really don’t like any of them.”

  “Let’s just say I haven’t fallen under their spell like most women on the island have, and leave it at that.” She rarely discussed her resentment of the families with her sisters, let alone a woman she’d only just met.

  “Well I have plenty to say about them.” Elaine leaned forward, her eyes bright with what Ivy called her gossip look. While Elaine filled Jan in on the latest gossip about who was sleeping with whom, and who had become a submissive to which men this past year, Ivy let her mind wander back to the days when love was a sweet mystery, waiting to be explored, and all men were chivalrous and kind.

  Once upon a time, she had been infatuated with a Durante man and a Raleigh one, but she’d been young and foolish. As far as she knew, they’d barely known she existed. As she grew up and became acquainted with the way things really worked on the island, she’d pushed her teenage fantasies further and further into the deep recesses of her mind.

  And now, after having been burned by the sister of one of those objects of her young fantasies, she realized how foolish they’d been. Tom Raleigh was likely just as calculating and detached as Jeff, Taj, and the rest of them.

  And as for Merrick Durante, it didn’t matter that he was one of the Durantes who had dared not to work for Asa and Tim. Merrick was the project manager for JD Construction, the company his father, Jesse, and uncle, Davis, owned. Jesse and Davis were Asa’s cousins, but the men weren’t friends with Asa by any stretch of the imagination.

  As far as Ivy was concerned, that more than likely had rendered Merrick even more of an ass. He had something to prove, after all, just like his father and uncle did. No. Her fantasies were just that. The innocent musings of a silly teen who had spent too much time watching old movies and reading bodice rippers.

  This was reality. Flying cargo on and off the island, and empty, lonely nights now that Scott had turned his attentions elsewhere. There were no Durante or Raleigh Doms waiting to whisk her off to their homes in the hills and make all her fantasies come true.

  Chapter Two

  Merrick Durante didn’t have time for this shit. He was in the office yet again past five o’clock, and now he’d just been handed a weather report that was sure to further delay construction on Palace of Eris. Building the resort had split the island apart lately, and construction was so far behind schedule now that he had serious doubts it would ever be done.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he said. “Why did you have to show me this?”

  Kathie Robinson, his administrative assistant, gave him a droll look. “Because you needed to know.”

  “This sucks.”

  “I can’t control the weather.”

  “I know that.” She was used to him, and he knew she wasn’t actually upset at his reaction.

  “What do you want me to tell the crew?”

  He tried not to scowl, but these days the expression was nearly automatic. “Tell them to watch out for high winds.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m going home. It’s nearly six.”

  Merrick grunted in response. She shook her head and left his office, and then Merrick closed the door behind her and sat down at his desk.

  First there had been the shit Asa had given them for putting the resort on the drawing board in the first place. Asa’s misguided belief that he owned everything and everyone on this fucking island had been at the heart of that. But Asa considered the resort a slap in the face from Merrick’s father, and he’d gone all the way to the Louisiana State Supreme Court to try and stop it from going up. The court’s decision that basically told Asa to take a hike had taken all of eight minutes, if rumors were to be believed.

  When Merrick had found out, along with everyone else on the island, that the heart of Asa’s decades-long feud with Jesse, and Davis by association, had been over an affair Jesse had with Asa’s third wife, Dot, Merrick had wanted to march over to Phoebe’s Playthings and tell Asa to grow the fuck up already. Asa had considered the resort a personal affront to him, but then Asa considered everything that he didn’t think up as “personal.”

  But finding out what a cheating prick his father was hadn’t been anything new to Merrick. He’d known that for years, and had been in counseling because of it once upon a time. His mother kept taking his father back, and that made Merrick sicker than how little respect his father had for her.

  To make matters worse, Merrick’s father had then done something even more boneheaded. Jesse had hired an attorney in New Orleans to leak not only the affair, but also the juicy fact that Asa had gone to the Supreme Court over the resort. Once the media jumped on it, the attorney had done everything possible to try and discredit Phoebe’s Playthings in the process.

  Merrick had nearly quit over that fiasco. Fuck this. He could get a job at Phoebe’s Playthings in a heartbeat. He was a Durante, after all, but he wanted no part of the fight between his father and Asa.

  The real kicker had been the hurricane, and then the fires. And now, he had more shitty weather to deal with. The project had originally been slated to be complete by Christmas. Now, they’d be lucky to have it done in time for spring break.

  The hurricane hadn’t been under anyone’s control, of course, but the fires had been. Merrick’s asswipe brother, Owen, and Owen’s equally idiotic friend Penn Rosen were currently awaiting trial for arson and murder. They’d se
t a series of fires that demolished the progress on the resort, and killed several workers who had still been on site. Others had been badly burned and were still off the island in burn units. All because Owen had his hands in the till for years as their accountant, and thought he could make things right with insurance money.

  Now, months later, they weren’t even close to being back where they’d been before the hurricanes and fires.

  He absently picked up the paperweight and turned it over. It supposedly contained an amulet that protected its owner from dark magick, much like the one Kade had. Kade Durante was his third cousin, as near as Merrick could tell, and had an amulet that contained Ouanga. The herb was normally used as a charm used to poison an enemy, but their amulets had been blessed for protection instead.

  If family lore was to be believed, both amulets had come from Javel Durante, Merrick’s grandfather. But no one knew where Javel had obtained them, or why this one had been made into a paperweight. Kade’s had not been.

  Merrick sighed. More curse bullshit. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in it, but he had no time to dwell on it like most of his cousins and uncles did. He was knee-deep in shit here and had to figure out a way to bring in this project before they lost every last cent they had on it.

  The whine of a small plane overhead caught his attention. He knew the times that both McMurphy Flight and Cove Cargo flew by heart now. Anyone who’d lived on the island more than two weeks would know them. The companies flew their regular routes like clockwork. The only time McMurphy flew off their schedule was if Asa or Tim insisted on them flying passengers on or off the island. As for Cove Cargo, he’d never noticed them fly at an irregular time.

  Merrick glanced out the window and frowned as the Cessna descended toward the airport. The distinctive blue and white logo of Cove Cargo was visible, even if he hadn’t known it was the plane that Ivy Balloux normally flew. Where had she gone and why? It wasn’t her day to work, and this wasn’t a regular route time for the company.

  He watched the clouds forming overhead, signaling the approaching storm that Kathie had warned him of, while he allowed memories of Ivy to fog up his brain. He’d had a major crush on her since grade school, but he was such an ass he’d never done anything about it. Tom Raleigh was partly to blame for that. And it was even worse now that Tom’s twat of a sister, Nadine, had taken up with Scott McMurphy. Scott, up until five months ago, had been engaged to Ivy.

  Merrick’s complicated friendship with Tom went back to their grade school days as well, but their parents’ feelings toward Ivy and her family couldn’t be more opposing if they tried. While Merrick’s parents fully supported the cargo company, and used it extensively for personal and business dealings, Tom’s parents would rather pay exorbitant fees to a larger carrier if they needed something shipped on or off the island.

  Apparently the mess had started before Merrick or Tom were born when Dennis, Tom’s father, got fired from Phoebe’s Playthings. Not too many Durantes or Raleighs earned that distinction. You could totally fuck up your job and still be employed if your last name was Durante or Raleigh. But Dennis had always been drunk on the job, if what Merrick’s uncle Davis told him was true, so Asa had been right to fire him.

  Dennis had been part of the research and development team at Phoebe’s Playthings, and his degree was in engineering. He tried to parlay that into working for McMurphy Flight or Cove Cargo, but Ivy’s parents wouldn’t hire him. They’d already heard through the grapevine why Asa had canned him.

  But Scott’s father hired him, and then regretted his mistake for years before Dennis finally drank himself into an early grave. Scott’s father constantly talked smack about Ivy’s parents, Susan and Mike, for so many years that Merrick and Tom were both shocked as hell when Scott asked Ivy to marry him, and she said yes.

  Scott had to have grown up believing Ivy’s parents were the most unforgiving people on the planet. It was all his father talked about. Their children caught the same venom by association, even though no one in the Balloux family had ever personally done anything to hurt a McMurphy, as far as Merrick knew.

  But once Scott dumped Ivy for Nadine, Tom had been devastated. Merrick wasn’t surprised by it, but not because of the same reasons as Tom. Tom had a thing for Ivy most of his life as well. The two had talked about her often enough. But because of the convoluted history between her family, the McMurphy family, and their own two families, neither one felt comfortable approaching her.

  Whenever Merrick would talk about saying fuck it all to his family because he wanted to ask Ivy out, Tom would talk him out of it. Merrick had long suspected it was because he wanted the first shot at her, but then he never acted on it either. What a fucked up, sorry pair.

  Once Scott took up with Nadine, Tom understandably felt torn. It didn’t help that Nadine and Scott both kept feeding Tom stories about Ivy that he and Merrick found difficult to believe. She didn’t seem like the cold bitch they made her out to be. Merrick remembered her as a happy child and a wistful teen. She’d been working for her parents all her life in some capacity, which meant she had a great work ethic as well.

  And now, Merrick also felt conflicted because of his friendship with Tom, and the fact that he was part of this convoluted mess of Durantes and Raleighs, even though he didn’t work for Asa and Tim. They both had the same loyalty to their families, but Merrick wanted no part of Nadine’s vitriol. He’d never liked her, and Tom knew that. Tom had always barely tolerated her.

  But the pull of family was strong if you were born with the surname of Durante or Raleigh, and those who dared to buck it were practically outcasts. Merrick picked up the paperweight again, thinking of Kade, who owned its twin.

  He and Elliot Raleigh once headed up manufacturing at Phoebe’s Playthings. But when Asa made them choose between their sub, Giselle Macey, and their jobs, both men quit. Now, they were building a club on their property, along with Giselle. No one gave them flack about that. Asa wouldn’t dare. Not after the way he’d treated them and Giselle’s family.

  “Fuck this,” whispered Merrick. He should have taken his MBA and gone to work for Asa and Tim. The headaches JD Construction had suffered recently were no longer worth it, family business or not.

  He turned off his computer and left the building, choosing to take the route home that would lead him past Cove Cargo. He did that fairly often, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ivy and her long, brown hair. When he was very lucky, she happened to be walking on the grounds, and he got close enough to say hello so he could look into her startling green eyes.

  If she guessed that each time they exchanged a few quick words, it was because he’d taken a route that was out of the way for him, she never let on.

  He got more than lucky today. Ivy and Elaine, one of her sisters, were on the same road headed toward downtown. He watched as Elaine met up with a larger group, and then Ivy turned east toward the hills where so many Raleigh and Durante homes had been built. Where was she going?

  Merrick sprinted to catch up to her. “Hey there. Kind of cold to be out walking, isn’t it?”

  She whirled around, clearly surprised to see him. “Oh, hey. Yeah, I guess it is. I should go home and get my Jeep but after this day I need to walk.”

  He didn’t have occasion to talk to her nearly as often as he wished, but each time he did, her voice was breathy and her smile genuine. What the hell was he doing, only dreaming about this woman instead of asking her out? So many wasted years because of crap he’d had no part in.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked, hoping his voice sounded casual. It wasn’t home. She lived in a modest house on the same compound that housed her parents’ home, the company offices, and airplane hangers.

  “Taj Durante’s house. I have a very special package to deliver to Alaina. I had hoped to be back in time to deliver it to her at work, but Elaine and I got delayed in New Orleans because of weather.”

  Merrick snorted. “Yeah. The next storm is headed here.”


  “I heard.”

  “What do you have to take to Alaina?”

  “Some very important papers from Jan Beale, her professor friend at Pepperdine. It’s about the curse.”

  “Oh. That.”

  Ivy laughed, and Merrick fought a sudden urge to pull her close and kiss her. “I take it you’re not a believer?”

  “That isn’t it.” He didn’t think she really wanted to hear his discourse on the curse and all its ramifications.

  “Jan believes she’s close to unlocking the secrets, thanks to Shona’s diary.”

  “Is that what you were carrying in your plane today?”

  Her eyes grew wide, and an expression he couldn’t quite read passed through her eyes. “How did you know I was flying today?”

  Fuck. “It was an irregular route. I happened to be glancing out the window and noticed the Cessna. The only one you usually fly.” He was grateful the sun had already gone down so she couldn’t clearly see the embarrassment on his face.

  Ivy watched him carefully for a few moments, and this time she seemed to be making up her mind about something. He was tired of lusting after her from afar, and he was sick of listening to Nadine put her down. It was time to man up. Fate had brought him here, to this spot, and he wasn’t going to blow yet another chance to get to know her better.

  He swallowed hard. Even if this failed, at least he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life saying he’d never tried. “I’d better escort you up the hill to Taj’s house. I wouldn’t want the cops to toss you back down here among the other serfs, after all.”

  She laughed again, and now his damn dick was rock hard. Then she put her hands on her hips and gazed at him with disbelief. “I have to admit I’m at a loss here.”

  “You mean because I asked to escort you up the hill?” That sickening feeling he remembered from when he was thirteen, trying to talk to a girl, washed over him.

  She shook her head. “No, not that. I never expected one of you to acknowledge what the rest of us always say.” She pointed toward the hills. “You know. The homes on the hills…castles and serfs…that kind of stuff.”