“Sorry. Forgot to tell you—we’ve got a thing with Sam’s parents tonight. They’re leaving tomorrow.”
Good thing he wasn’t face-to-face with Jack. His brother could always catch him in a lie.
“No problem. You sure everything is good?”
Brady dropped his head against the seat. He wanted to say no, that he wasn’t sure what he was doing at all. He wanted to ask if being in a D/s relationship meant feeling like the ground beneath you was shifting all the time, if the drive to please your Dominant went so far beyond the bedroom you weren’t sure it was even healthy. But talking about this was impossible. It would make him feel weak. It was bad enough that Sam had made that comment about Hanna not seeming strong, capable and forceful if she was a sub.
Didn’t she see him as strong and capable? Hadn’t she said that? Or was that only when she was his Mistress? Did she only love him as her pet, or as her husband, too?
Maybe all this hot sex was creating even more potholes in their marriage.
Maybe being Dominant and submissive wasn’t fixing anything at all.
The building door opened. Sam stepped outside. Her smile was radiant, and it was focused straight on him, like he lit up her goddamn world. She’d said she wanted to parade him around tonight the way she used to in college—to show all the women there, Hanna included, that he was hers.
“Yeah,” he typed back. “Everything’s good.”
They arrived at the bar a few minutes early. If Brady had thought his stomach was in knots before, now it was a fucking Boy Scout trying to earn a badge. He turned his ring furiously with one thumb in his pocket, hoping he didn’t forget any of Sam’s instructions. He didn’t have to call her Mistress, but he should act respectful. Don’t make too many jokes, but be himself. Try to relax, but tell her if he was uncomfortable.
Oh yeah. Totally easy instructions. No problem.
They sat at a high-top and ordered drinks. By the time the server returned with them, Sam was waving Hanna over. And holy goddamn hell, this woman was beautiful. Taller than Sam and a little more curvy, like a dark jaguar to Sam’s pale lioness. And her skintight black dress hid nothing. Brady was stunned. Sam had mentioned Hanna’s accent and how she looked, but he had no idea she’d be like this.
He was half proud his wife could get such a hot woman interested in her, half completely intimidated.
“Well, well,” Hanna said, chin tipping up in the way he was used to when people first encountered his size. “Isn’t he pretty.”
Brady’s cheeks went hot, and not in a good way. He didn’t like being talked about like he wasn’t there, but then Sam reached over and stroked his hair, beaming.
“He is, isn’t he?”
Her smile and touch tightened that chain of ownership she had over him. It made him feel settled, safer and protected.
“For sure,” Hanna said, waving over the server. “And you know how I like pretty things.”
Was he a thing now?
“I appreciate the compliment,” he said, finding his voice. Hanna was acting like she was the one in control, but Sam had made it clear—it was his call to say no.
It was strange, to have that decision on his shoulders. So much of him preferred it when Sam called the shots. And he had no clue how he was supposed to figure this out sitting in a bar. When the server arrived to take Hanna’s order, Sam lowered her hand from Brady’s hair. She and Hanna started talking about work, so he sat back and listened.
When Hanna was focused on Sam, her behavior was different than the brash and confident way she’d approached him. Was it just that she was a switch or was there more to it? He’d learned early on breaking into websites how to understand the inner workings of things and figure out how they functioned. It was all about getting past the user interface, looking for flaws in the armor. Hanna had armor on, but how did she function behind it?
Brady drew on his inner hacker, and watched. Hanna’s drink arrived, and as she fingered the base of her martini glass and looked at his wife, she seemed almost innocent—girlish and shy. Maybe her vulnerability was that she did like Sam, and wanted to do this, but how could he trust there was nothing malicious behind it?
Sam’s body language was easier to read. Her interest was genuine, and he already knew her insecurities. She was a little selfish at times, had a short fuse when she was overwhelmed. But she’d been upfront in wanting something that she’d kept hidden for so long.
Her eyes flicked his way. She reached under the table and squeezed his leg.
Sam wanted this. And he wanted to give it to her. But another rule of web development was if you followed an idea out of left field, you needed to set up some kind of control. A fallback, so if everything exploded, you could revert back to the first version without panic.
Brady sat up a bit taller. He’d thought they’d gone so far from simple it wasn’t even funny, but things were getting clearer, and he had some questions to ask. And he might’ve been Sam’s pet, but even a pet on a chain is its master’s protector.
The two women paused in conversation. Brady took the shot and jumped in.
“I’d like to ask you something,” he said to Hanna.
She turned his way with one dark eyebrow raised. A look that said, I’m sorry, was I speaking to you?
Brady ignored it and barreled through. “Have you done this before?”
“A few times,” she replied. “Although the word this is kind of broad.”
“This, as in had a threesome with a married couple in the lifestyle.”
Mic. Drop. Couldn’t get more specific than that.
Hanna grinned at Sam. “Cheeky, isn’t he?”
Sam played with the straw in her drink. “He can be.” But she was smiling, too.
Hanna turned back to Brady. “I haven’t done exactly that, but I’ve had several different variations on the theme. And I’ve been in the lifestyle for several years.”
“So you’ve been tested, then.”
He didn’t care if the question bordered on disrespectful. There was no chance that he was going to do this without being sure he was keeping his wife, and himself, safe.
“Yes, of course. I can give you the results if you want proof.”
Sam and Brady locked eyes. She raised her eyebrows in a question, one he wanted to answer with an emphatic yes. He needed data, numbers to fall back on. Not someone’s word. But he’d gone as far as he needed to go, and Sam was the one running the show here.
“If you have a copy on hand, that’d be good,” she said. “Although Brady and I haven’t been tested since before we were married.”
Before he knew she liked girls. After she’d almost had a threesome. Once again, Brady felt strangely exposed. If he didn’t like having Hanna know something that personal about him, how was he going to feel when they were naked together?
Hanna waved Sam’s comment off. “It’s fine. I trust you.”
She trusted them? So easily? Sam seemed to need to push the issue, too.
“Are you sure? Neither of us have slept with anyone else since then, so I’m sure nothing has changed.”
“Good on both of ya,” Hanna said, raising her glass. “I don’t know how you do it.”
That got his stomach worked up again, got him tense wondering if she knew how big a deal this was for them, but he let it go. He’d said his piece.
They continued talking for a while more, small talk about nothing in particular, and when it was time to say goodbye, Sam took Brady’s hand. She kept holding it while Hanna kissed her cheek, sweet and submissive.
It was a beautiful picture, and for a moment Brady let the image of the three of them tangled up together tiptoe into his head, but he abruptly cut the fantasy off. He needed things to slow down. To get off this spinning merry-go-round and stand on solid ground for a minute, to figure out their lives and their marriage and if their kids were okay.
Hanna’s head was still close to Sam’s when she gave Brady a look.
“May I?�
�� she asked Sam.
May she what? Kiss him? Give him a high-five? Dress him in drag and make him sing karaoke?
Sam gave Hanna a nod of permission, and Hanna leaned over. Brady remained perfectly still when she leaned in and kissed his cheek, too.
Her kiss was different. Longer. Lingering. A slow drag of her lips above the cut of his beard line. But it wasn’t Hanna’s kiss that got Brady hard. It was Sam’s look over Hanna’s shoulder. Her wild, ecstatic smile. The sudden need to serve her was intense, to see that look on her face as she rode him, her hands clasping his wrists, her slickness a scent he could wear. But they couldn’t do that tonight, not with the girls to get back to, and Brady wasn’t sure which one of them she’d be thinking about right now anyway, him or Hanna.
When they were in the car, Sam quietly asked, “So?”
He had to give her an answer now? It was hard to see clear between giving Sam what she wanted, and what Brady wanted for himself.
“I don’t know if I trust her,” he said.
“Why?”
His gut told him this wasn’t a good idea, but he couldn’t put his finger on the exact reason. “I don’t know her.”
Sam pinched her lips and exhaled heavily, and Brady’s stomach took another beating before she shook her head. “That’s fair. I don’t know her that well either, but I guess I couldn’t do this with anyone I did know, other than you.”
He careened into relief and gratitude at being the one she felt comfortable with. Then she sighed, and it punched a hole through his chest.
“I still don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.
Oh, God. He hated seeing her that way. “It’s not you. It’s me not knowing.”
She nodded quickly, offered him a tight smile.
“Can I sleep on it?” he asked.
Her smile softened. “Sure. No problem.”
The next day, Sam’s parents moved to Arizona.
Most of their personal things had been packed up and shipped. A moving van came to collect the furniture they were taking, although they were leaving some to help stage the apartment, something Sam would be responsible for now. The place was still on the market—they’d rejected the lowball offers they’d gotten, and their new townhome came fully furnished. Sam took the keys without blinking and seemed less upset than he thought she’d be when they said goodbye at the airport. The girls, however, were snot-faced from crying, and they stopped at the park on the way home in the hopes of cheering them up.
Allegra’s sadness seemed to subside when they got out of the car, but Hope hovered close, pressed tight against Brady’s side.
“You want me to carry you, munchkin?” he asked.
Hope nodded. He picked her up without a word, his relief palpable. She, it seemed, had finally forgiven him, and clung to him like a monkey as they approached the playground.
“What if Allegra doesn’t want to play with me?”
Geez, had he passed on his attention issues to Allegra and his fear of rejection to her?
“Maybe you’ll make a new friend.” It was a sunny day, too, so the tree-lined space was packed with other kids, parents standing around by the park benches.
And one of those parents was Hanna.
“Hey,” Sam said when they approached her. “I didn’t know you lived around here.”
They were considering sleeping with this woman, but Sam didn’t know where she lived?
“I don’t,” Hanna replied, giving Brady a casual wave. “We live on the north side of the Pike. I take my kids here because it’s nicer than the playground by us.”
She was in jeans and a hoodie, a completely different look from last night. Less threatening, more…normal.
“You have kids?” Allegra asked. Not the slightest bit shy, as always.
“I do. Two girls. You want to meet them?” When Allegra nodded, Hanna cupped her hands around her mouth. “Aliyah, Imani! Over here, now!”
It wasn’t the Hanna he’d met yesterday. This one had the voice of a mom—one who took no shit. Allegra went up on the balls of her feet, chomping at the bit to meet new friends. Two children darker than Hanna bolted from the playground and trotted obediently to her side.
“Girls, say hello to Mommy’s friends.”
They both waved as Hanna introduced them. Aliyah’s hair was in two braided pigtails, and she eagerly bounced toward Allegra.
“You wanna play on the swings?” she asked.
Allegra nodded, and then they took a hard run toward the rubber mats of the playground, shouting over who could get there first. Imani hung behind, looking up at Hope.
“You wanna play with her?” Brady asked his daughter.
Hope nodded and he let her slip to the ground. Imani was younger, and Brady watched in relief as Hope asked her quietly where she wanted to play. Holding hands, the two went to the slide.
“You don’t have to worry about keeping an eye on all of them.” Hanna pointed to an older Asian woman standing at the corner of the playground. “Mimi is like a guard dog.”
“Mimi?” Sam asked.
“Wash’s aunt.”
Sam didn’t explain, but she didn’t need to. What little he knew about Hanna was that her husband was a deadbeat dad who’d skipped town, and she had some extended relatives who lived nearby. They started talking then, and once again, Brady stood to the side and watched.
He’d had his guard up about Hanna, but looking at her now, she was no different than them. She was a person with a family. Yeah, she was someone kinky who wanted to play, but they were all still just parents. Just people.
Sam glanced over at him. Smiling, she reached for his hand and rubbed her fingers over his wedding ring.
And that was all he needed.
Out on the playground, Allegra started laughing—a boisterous sound he’d know anywhere. Hope was standing at the bottom of the slide waiting to catch Imani. For a moment, Brady finally felt like a superhero, like he was making all his girls happy. He couldn’t ignore the feeling that so much was changing, that life as he knew it was swiftly getting left behind, but giving Sam what she wanted was the overriding thing.
He could give this to her. After all, she’d given him everything he’d wanted so far, and it was every guy’s dream to have a threesome. He was just getting a different version of that dream. And like Sam said, it wasn’t like they were opening their marriage. He was the recurring character. Hanna was the guest star.
He pictured how the night could go, allowed himself to imagine Sam ordering Hanna around in that way that got his skin prickling. Imagined Sam commanding them both. Him and Hanna pleasuring Sam together.
Yeah. Fuck. They were gonna do this. There was no reason not to. She’d gotten him this far, taken him safely through butt plugs and pegging and humiliation. She’d take him safely through this. And he’d do the same for her. He’d stand in traffic for her, and she loved him. Nothing was getting in the way of that.
What did they have that huge bed for, if not to do shit like this?
When they left the park, they let the girls run off to the car ahead of them. Under the cover of the trees, Brady walked close to Sam.
“Hey,” he said. His stomach flip-flopped when she looked up at him.
Brady nodded over his shoulder in Hanna’s direction.
“Yes.”
25
Sam’s phone rang when she was halfway home. There was traffic on the Pike, jamming up two full lanes and making Sam worry she was going to be late for the bus, but she couldn’t do anything about that, and she didn’t want to ignore Cassie’s call.
She hit the button on her dash.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry about last weekend.”
“No worries.” Cassie’s cheerful voice came through on her car speakers. “We missed you.”
Sam grimaced. She’d ignored both Cassie’s and Lilly’s texts about going to the pub, then made up excuses about being busy with the kids. “I missed you guys, too.”
“How’s work
going?” Cassie asked.
“Good.” It was, mostly. Aside from finding more checks for the Choate file that didn’t line up. They all pointed to Pierce, but she couldn’t prove it. “Busy, but good.”
There was a sound in the background—a voice that didn’t sound like Patrick’s, then the noise of a phone getting muffled.
“You guys suck at subterfuge, you know that?”
“What do you mean?” Cassie asked.
“Lilly, you can talk,” Sam said. “Or should I pretend I didn’t hear Jack talking?”
Lilly made a sound of exasperation. “You really would make a good attorney.”
There was a small break in the traffic, a few yards of movement that had Sam looking at the clock, calculating how long it would take at this rate. “So what’s the reason for this intervention?”
There was a short pause before Lilly said, “We’re worried about you.”
“Worried I’m watching too many courtroom dramas?” She was pulling a Brady here, using humor and sarcasm to divert the conversation.
Now she got why he did it.
“Neither you nor Brady are talking to any of us,” Cassie added.
Sam didn’t know what to say. She’d kept her distance from her friends since things started up with Hanna. Stopping talking to them wasn’t intentional—she just had a thousand balls in the air.
It wasn’t the only thing she’d stopped doing.
She hadn’t been to the gym or updated her Instagram profile. Previously posting to it daily, now it remained untouched, like one of the girls’ toys left behind when a shiny newer one arrived. She missed her workouts but didn’t have time for them, missed her parents, too, but they’d left, and it was something she needed to accept. Now instead of looking after them, she was looking after the apartment, fielding calls from the Realtor in between everything else. She was on a constant high, running from work to home to dance lessons to doctors’ appointments to texting with Hanna, who’d emailed her test results. The house hadn’t been cleaned either, the dishes piled up, laundry unfolded, her vacuum gathering dust.
Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3) Page 24
