She flashed another radiant smile. “Okay, yes. I definitely need a shower.” She turned back before disappearing into the bathroom. “Thank you, Liam. For everything.”
~*~
Alex showered quickly, half afraid if she didn’t hurry Liam would be gone when she came out. She lathered herself in suds, desperate to wash any traces of Anthony from her body. She shuddered, recalling his long penis thrusting in and out of her mouth and later ejaculating on her face and breasts while she lay naked and chained at the foot of his bed.
The burning anger was better than the helpless terror she’d endured while in his clutches. She’d been in awe of Liam when he grabbed the phone and told the guy where to go. The steel in his voice left no mistake he meant what he said. It felt good to have Liam Rutherford in her corner, even if all they could ever be was friends.
In her search for love, she’d nearly risked her life. Never again would she allow herself to be placed in such a vulnerable position. She’d learned her lesson. Oh boy, had she.
Feeling better from the shower and her new sense of resolve, Alex pulled on a sundress and hurried out to make sure Liam hadn’t been a figment of her imagination.
He was still there, standing by her bookshelf with a book in his hand. He held it out. “Heart Thief by A. H. Stewart. Very impressive.”
Alex grinned despite herself. “You knew I was an author.”
“Yes. But it’s one thing to know, quite another to hold the book in your hands. I was leafing through it. It looks very good. I’ll have to read it.”
The idea of Liam reading her romance novel made Alex laugh. Daniel, maybe. But Liam? No way. His idea of light reading was a history of the Roman Empire. “I can’t quite see you as the romance reading type.”
Liam flipped the book open and began to read aloud. “When he pulled down her panties, her legs seemed to fall open of their own accord. His tongue was hot and silky against her. She sighed with pleasure, forgetting all pretense of resistance.”
Embarrassed, Alex tried to grab the book from his hand. Liam laughed and held it behind his back, his voice teasing. “This is good stuff. Maybe we’ll have you read it aloud to us one night after dinner.”
Alex’s heart caught at the implication that they had a future left to share, but she said nothing.
They left the apartment in search of breakfast. Once they were settled in a booth at Leo’s Diner, coffee in front of them and food ordered, she dared, “Why now, Liam? What made you drive all the way here?”
Why you and not Daniel?
“We want you to come home.”
Whoa.
“I’m sorry. What?”
She couldn’t have heard him right. They were better off without her. They didn’t need some third wheel screwing up their lives.
“Having you take off like that was really hard on Daniel—”
“On Daniel,” she couldn’t help but repeat, aware of the bitterness in her tone but unable to control it. That’s right. Liam was the one who’d said she should leave.
“On me too, Alex.” Liam’s voice was sincere.
She looked up at him. He was gazing at her with those soft brown eyes, so different from Anthony’s fiery, penetrating stare. She shook her head, shaking the other man’s image from her mind.
“I’m not going to lie to you and say there were no issues,” he continued. “You know there were, because you were right in the middle of them. One thing I’ve learned through painful trial and error is that if you don’t communicate—if you can’t share from the heart what’s going on inside your head—your relationship is not going to move forward. If it gets bad enough, the whole thing just crumbles. The sad thing is, half the time people don’t even know why. ‘It just wasn’t meant to be,’ they might say. Then they go on to make the same mistakes in the next relationship and wonder why they can never connect.”
The waitress arrived and set a platter of pancakes with fresh sliced bananas and blueberries in front of Alex. Liam, who said he’d already eaten, only sipped at a cup of coffee. Alex poured syrup until the cakes were soaked with it and grabbed her fork. She took a huge bite, moaning with pleasure as she chewed, her eyes fluttering shut in ecstasy.
Liam laughed. “I’m glad to see your appetite is intact, at any rate.”
Alex laughed too. “I’m starving,” she said, loading another big bite onto her folk. “Want some? There’s enough here for both of us plus that family over there.”
“Not at the rate you’re going, there isn’t,” Liam teased. “Seriously, though. You eat, I’ll talk. I haven’t done enough talking. That’s part of the problem. Maybe if I’d been a better Dom, you wouldn’t have felt compelled to run away.
He leaned forward, pain in his dark eyes. “We excluded you from too much. We expected you to submit to us, to give us your obedience and your service. But we didn’t take into account what was going on in your head. What it must have felt like to be sent to your room at night after we were done with you.”
Alex’s eyes filled with tears and she looked down. She blinked away the tears and focused on her pancakes. She was done with crying.
“It’s all well and good for us to say up front we don’t want another partner, but just a submissive sex slave for Daniel to play with. That sounds fine on paper, I suppose, but real life can’t be compartmentalized like that. Real people can’t be, either. You can’t neatly stash your feelings away, but we acted like you could.
“In some ways I think it was to keep us safe, more than you. By telling you up front this wasn’t and wouldn’t be about love, we were giving each other permission to add someone to the relationship without making the commitment such an addition would or should have entailed.”
He put his hand on Alex’s arm. “You’re not eating.”
Alex realized she was clutching her fork, listening so hard to what Liam was saying she had forgotten about the food in front of her. She cut a piece of pancake with banana and put it in her mouth.
“There you go,” Liam said with a grin. “That would make Daniel happy to see you eat.”
Alex grinned back, seeing Daniel in her mind’s eye, busy over the stove making something delicious for their dinner while she chopped vegetables or polished silver nearby. She missed him at that moment with such a palpable ache she nearly cried out. Instead she took another bite of pancake.
She had never heard Liam say so much in the entire two weeks she had known him. She wanted him to continue, wondering where his long, convoluted apology, if that’s what it was, was heading.
He continued. “Daniel and I have talked about this a lot. You know, maybe you did the right thing. By taking off like you did, you forced us to look at ourselves and what we were doing.
“Daniel said something that really struck a nerve with me. He said in a true D/s relationship, you really couldn’t have submission without love. He said submission was by its very definition a kind of love. But we tried to cut that out of the equation with you. We set you, and by extension ourselves, up to fail. In that way, I was no better than Anthony—”
“No!” Alex interjected more loudly than she’d intended. Several people at nearby tables looked over at her. She felt herself blushing and lowered her voice. “Please don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. What I had with you and Daniel was real. Yes, I agree there were aspects of it I had a hard time dealing with. You hit it on the head—being sent away each night while you fell asleep in each other’s arms… I guess that really sums up what was missing for me. But I went into it with eyes wide open. I thought I knew what I was signing up for. I thought I could handle it. It wasn’t like you tried to trick me.
“But Anthony.” She spit the word. “He doesn’t have a clue. What he claimed to be offering me wasn’t about D/s or love or even cheap thrills. He tried to take what wasn’t his. To demand what can’t be commanded. He stopped just short of physical rape, but he raped my spirit. He tried to steal a part of me. He…”
Despite her promise
to herself, Alex began to cry again. Liam moved from his side of the booth and slid in next to her, putting his arm around her. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay. He’ll never harm you again, I promise. Never.”
After a moment she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s gonna take a while to get over this.”
“I would think so. You’ve been through a very harrowing experience. I’m so proud of you for the way you kept your head and got yourself out of there. You did good, kid.”
Alex managed a smile. She appreciated his not calling her an immature reckless idiot who’d listened to her cunt instead of her head. Maybe she did good by getting out but she still didn’t feel very good. She was shaky and anxious. If Liam hadn’t miraculously shown up when he had, she would be a complete mess instead of only a partial one.
Ah, but he was there. And she was so happy to see him. Not only because he stepped in with that bastard on the phone but because she’d genuinely missed him.
She leaned her head against his shoulder and it felt so right. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed not only Daniel, but Liam too. The thought of letting him drive away, leaving her alone to face her demons, nearly made her cry again.
He said he wanted her to come back with him. To come home. But could two really become three? Was it possible for them to love her, to accept her as an equal? Or were they only reacting off their own guilt for trying this crazy experiment in the first place? If she returned, what would be different? Could it possibly work?
“What about Daniel? What does he think about you driving all the way to Danbury to see me?”
For the first time since she’d met him, Liam looked embarrassed. Then he smiled a shy smile. “He doesn’t know,” he said softly. “I wanted to surprise him.”
Chapter 17
Daniel was pruning the rosebushes that grew on either side of the front door when he heard Liam’s car crunching up the gravel drive. Eagerly, he turned to wave and was surprised to see someone in the passenger seat.
It took a second before he realized who it was—Alex!
He waited by the door, not sure how to react. They climbed out of the car and Daniel saw Alex had a suitcase with her. Liam leaned toward her and said something. She nodded and remained where she stood, clutching her bag.
Liam strode toward Daniel. “Hey. I didn’t go into town. I went and got her. I brought her home to you—to us. She’s willing to give us another chance. I know I probably should have told you. I—I wanted to surprise you.”
Daniel saw the trepidation mixed with the love in Liam’s eyes. His heart melted. But he held himself in check, mindful of the girl standing a few yards away. “It’s a good surprise. A fantastic surprise.”
She was wearing the same turquoise blue sundress she’d been wearing the first time she’d showed up at their door, her butterscotch gold hair hanging in flyaway sheets around her pixie face. Daniel felt happiness welling up, surging through his body and bursting out in a broad smile. “You brought our girl home.”
The relief and happiness on Liam’s face was worth a thousand words. He nodded and turned toward Alex, waving her toward them. She dropped her suitcase and sprinted forward, flinging herself into Daniel’s arms. He caught her up and swung her around, not sure if he was laughing or crying.
She buried her head in his neck. “Daniel,” she said and again, “Daniel.” After a few moments she released her grip and he set her down. He looked into her face and realized she had been crying. Her lovely green eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She looked exhausted.
“What’s the matter? Are you okay?” He glanced over at Liam. “Is she okay?”
Alex took a deep shuddery breath. She looked toward Liam and back to Daniel. “I did something really, really dumb. I don’t really want to talk about it right now. Not yet. If that’s okay.”
He put his arm around her and led her into the house. “Yes, sure. Of course.” Over her head he looked toward Liam with concern. Liam offered a small smile and mouthed the words, She’s okay.
They went into the kitchen and Daniel prepared a fresh pot of coffee. When Alex excused herself to use the bathroom, Liam gave Daniel a thumbnail version of what happened with Anthony.
“What the hell? How could she go to that poser asshole? After what he did to me?”
“Think about it, Daniel. She didn’t really know what happened at the party. She saw your back, yes, but you’ve been marked before, if not as severely. She wasn’t there for the scene and we didn’t talk about it in front of her.”
Liam sighed. “There’s a lot we didn’t talk about in front of her. We’ve kept her at arm’s length. It’s why she left. We were treating her like an object. We let our feelings for each other and our jealousies get in the way of giving her a truly submissive experience. We were playing games. Fun games, sure, but in the end they had a price and Alex is the one who bore most of that cost.”
Alex appeared in the doorway, looking shy and impossibly sweet. The thought of that bastard Campos hurting her made Daniel sick with anger. He didn’t want to upset her any more than she must already be, but he couldn’t help saying, “Liam told me, Alex. What that asshole did to you has nothing to do with erotic submission. You do know that, right?”
“I do.” Alex nodded and bit her lip, looking down.
Liam stood and walked over to her. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s try to let that go for now. We’ll deal with him later. However we got to this point, we’re just so glad you’re here. We aren’t asking for any promises or commitments right now. Just a chance for the three of us to reconnect and regroup. Why don’t we go upstairs and lie down together a while? I need my two subs in my arms.”
My two subs. Daniel rolled the words in his mind. He hoped Liam still planned to permit him to enjoy his role as Alex’s Dom while Liam was at work. But he realized with a clarity he hadn’t before that one reason for the jealousy and confusion between them was his blurring of his own role in relation to Liam.
He’d forgotten his place. He’d allowed his dominance over Alex to supersede his need and desire to submit to his true Master. He’d let his ego and willfulness override his innate longing to belong to another.
Silently, he vowed to himself not to let it happen again. Yes, he would continue to train and use Alex for their mutual pleasure and benefit, but never would he allow this to get in the way of what he had with Liam. He looked at the two of them standing in the doorway and his heart filled with gratitude that Liam was ready, even eager, to try again with their slave girl.
What about Alex? Was she really ready for what they offered? Would she be able to trust the two of them to guide her with a loving but firm hand, even after what the son of bitch had put her through?
When he looked into her face, he saw his answer. Her eyes were shining and the smile on her face could have lit a dark room.
“I’m going out,” Daniel announced the next morning. “I won’t be long.” He didn’t ask for permission nor did he volunteer where he was going. Liam gave him a long, hard look but said nothing. He knew where Daniel was going.
Daniel stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer in the ring while he waited for Campos to answer his door. When he did, Daniel didn’t waste his time with words. Men like Campos wouldn’t hear them anyway. He hauled back and landed a good solid punch, satisfied at the sound of his nose breaking on impact. Blood spurted from his nose as he stumbled back with a cry.
“That’s for Alex, you little piece of shit. If you get up the next one’s for me and it’s gonna hurt a hell of a lot worse, I guarantee.” Daniel waited, fully prepared to carry out his threat. The coward stayed on the ground, hiding his head in his hands. Daniel turned on his heel and left without looking back.
~*~
Liam’s cock was throbbing but he savored the ache. He would wait as long as he made them wait. He would suffer along with them through the exquisite torture to which he was subjecting his sexy slaves.
Daniel and Alex were facing each other, their bodies locked at the groin, their arms pulled taut and chained over their heads. Daniel’s erect cock was buried deep inside Alex. Her strong legs were wrapped tight around his hips.
Their assignment was to make sure Daniel’s cock stayed inside Alex while Liam whipped them both with various implements of pleasure and pain. By the same token, neither was to come. If they did, they’d soon feel the difference between erotic torture and real punishment.
Several weeks had passed since Alex had returned to them. She’d only left once to retrieve more of her clothing and other things she needed to make her stay a permanent one. They hadn’t yet convinced her to give up her garage apartment but the rent, which Liam insisted on paying, was nominal. If it gave her a certain sense of control to keep the place, that was okay by him.
Liam was happier than he’d realized it was possible to be. He’d thought he had everything a man could want with Daniel as his lover and submissive. When Alex had joined them as a sex slave, while the spice and excitement had been undeniable, the creeping jealousies and rising tensions had made him question if it was the right thing.
Since she’d returned after her ordeal with that Campos asshole, the three of them had finally been able to lay their fears aside. A little digging into Anthony’s background revealed an expired visa and unpaid taxes. Liam helped the process along, and Anthony had been deported.
Alex had been able to put the ordeal behind her, for the most part. She still woke from the occasional nightmare, but when she realized she was safe in their bed and in their arms, she would quiet and fall back asleep. Their relationship with her, both as Doms and as lovers and friends, continued to deepen with each passing day.
He couldn’t say he loved Alex more than or even as much as Daniel. He chose not to think in those terms. The love he felt for Daniel would always be unique and hold the most sacred spot in his heart. But the love he had for Alex was no less real, and it was deepening as time passed.
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