by Amber Bardan
Wood splits under Abel’s axe. For a moment I’m stuck there, rendered mesmerized by his movements. He adjusts a hunk on the stump and raises his axe, bringing it down in one strong sweep that splits it in two.
My breath catches as it did the first time I laid eyes on him. When he’d carried boxes into the new apartment he and Penny bought together. When I’d begged myself not to react to his gentle power. When I’d tried and failed to stop myself from admiring my best friend’s man more than I should.
He sets a new piece of wood on the stump, then glances up. The axe lowers to his side.
I tug my jacket tighter and approach. He lets the axe fall to the ground and faces me. His chest heaves and the way he watches, if I didn’t know better, I’d think this big hulking man was a little afraid of me.
My insides twist with pain. Until today, admire him is all I’d ever done. Penny had been the perfect friend to me—loud and vivacious, and more than happy to fill any silence with the sound of her own voice. Always so focused on what was going on in her own mind to question what might happen in someone else’s. And on Penny these qualities never seemed vain, more like extreme exuberance.
No wonder he’d loved her, she’d been captivating.
She’d captivated me too.
“It’s cold.” His breath makes puffs of fog in the air. He’s right, yesterday it’d been mild but if I’d been at the waterfall today I may not have found the nerve to take a swim.
“I’m okay.”
His warm brown eyes squint, hurt a cloud over their usual brightness. I’ve come to recognize this look on him. Abel and I are too much alike. Both of us were happy to have been moons in Penny’s orbit. Both most at peace sitting back and letting her have the spotlight. Never making a fuss. Neither of us could’ve imagined someone like her, so full of life, could be lost to something as simple as falling on the ski slopes and hitting her head.
“Are you?” His jaw pulses hard enough for me to see through his beard. “Because you didn’t look okay.”
I stare at him. Pressure blurs my vision. I’d tried to be a good friend. First to Penny and then to him. All the times I went to see him after she passed and comforted him as best as someone like me can comfort a person. I kept all my selfish longings inside.
“Sometimes you can’t anticipate how something is going to feel until you’re actually doing it. I just got overwhelmed.” A shiver overcomes me. I’m still overwhelmed.
He steps closer just a fraction, and leans to better look me in the eyes. “By which part?”
My mind flashes to the day before when he’d looked at me with such hunger—something I’d have given anything to see on him a few short years ago.
Before Dean.
His question ricochets through me, hitting against a thousand tender places. Which part of this truly overwhelmed me? The part where two cocks almost took me at the same time?
Did the forceful element get to be too much?
My pulse pounds harder. Or was it the part where I was with the both of them, Dean and Abel, and wanted it to truly be real?
His gaze penetrates mine. Abel, soft, quiet, gentle Abel, I’ve never seen him seethe.
“Why are you angry with me?” I take an agonized breath of piney smoke-tinged air. “Didn’t you want this?”
Had it taken a month for Dean to talk him into taking part? No. I know my husband; he’d never have allowed this to happen if any one of the three of us weren’t all the way into it.
He’d have been more likely to have spent the month ensuring that Abel really was before allowing things to progress.
Abel drops my gaze. He’d do anything for Dean. Maybe he pretended to want this. Pretended to want me.
And now regrets it...
His silence deafens me.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
His head snaps up.
“During the scenes you never said a word.” I lick my lips not sure why I’ve asked. Not sure why I have to know why he took that creative license with his character.
“Gabby...” He makes a sound, not a laugh, but a kind of scoff. “Why didn’t I say anything?”
He shakes his head and backs up a step. His hand moves over his face. “Are you serious?”
I’ve never been so good at talking emotion. Dean always made that easy on me. Took indirect routes to work out how I feel.
“Would you consider breaking the rules, and use my lucky blue pen with me?”
Right now with Abel, there’s no escape route from real discussion. He’s always been direct with me. That’s one of the first things I liked about him—he calls it as it is.
Now I have to return the favor. No free pass.
“Please, Abe, tell me.” I go after him and set my fingers lightly on his arm. The thick coarse fabric of his coat brushes my fingertips.
Then it’s his scent filling my lungs more potently than the outdoors. My mind flashes to that scent up against me, flooding me when I’d gasped and moaned.
His gaze moves to my touch on him then flicks to my face. “I never say anything I should when it comes to you.”
My hand falls away from him. He doesn’t?
“When Dean first told me he was taking you out, I kept my mouth shut because I’d had so many chances and never made my move.”
He’d wanted to make a move? On me?
My heart stops still. The year after Penny passed seems to swell in my memory. How sad he was. The way I wanted to do so much more than hug him and watch hockey with him on his couch. But he’d been grieving.
How could I take advantage when he was lonely and in pain?
Then he sent Dean to my office to open a new bank account, almost like he’d set us up.
His gaze pins me in place. “When I stood there at your wedding as best man, I said nothing. I had no right to object.”
All the air catches in my chest. A raw burning sensation like the sting of grazed skin floods my lungs then ravages my belly. It’s like I’m right back to five years ago. When I’d been head over heels for Abel and he’d been completely out of reach.
“You asked me why I didn’t speak before.” He grasps my upper arms. I stare at the base of his throat, at his Adam’s apple protruding beneath coarse stubble. “I couldn’t speak because I’ve been dreaming of you for so long.”
My gaze snaps up.
“Dreaming of touching you, loving you, fucking you. Of you screaming my name.”
His eyes blaze at me. Burn me up. Pin me in place.
“But when I finally have you it’s all pretend and you’re calling me by someone else’s name.” His jaw hardens. “And I’m having to force you.”
My head jerks back. It’s like water to the face. I maneuver out of his grasp.
“And I’m having to force you.”
The bitter edge to his tone slices.
Shame grates over me. Dean’s always made me feel as though it’s strong and brave to embrace our true desires.
Yet, the fear is always there. That I’m perverse. That others would be appalled by the things I want.
He gives me that jaw-clenched look again.
My stomach turns. Maybe I’m so used to acceptance; I don’t know how to process this judgment from someone I care about.
“What is this?” I stumble back. “Are you professing feelings, or shaming me for something you agreed to?”
He scruffs his beard. “I’m not trying to shame you.”
His warm eyes have gone so solemn. The Abe I know doesn’t shame people. He’s the person you turn to when you just need a hug, and someone to say it’s going to be okay.
He’s not going to judge or demand.
“I can’t believe he would let this go ahead if you didn’t really understand.” I glance back
at the house. Dean stands at the window. His hands shoved in his pockets, attention fixed on us. My chest rises and falls. How could he let this happen if he had any idea how Abel felt about me?
My pulse skips.
“I’m into you, Gabby, however I get to have you.” His tone brings my focus back to him. Earnest and gruff. “I have no problem holding you down if that’s what gets you off. There’s no denying I’m excited by most of it. But I don’t understand why you had to have it like this.”
My tongue gets dry. I never had to explain for Dean. He understood me before I understood myself. Abel though, he’s not like Dean with the analyzing—he takes people at face value. The ducts behind my eyes burn. The truth gathers inside me constricting my vital organs. I blamed grief for stopping me from ever trying something with Abel. But he’s always seen me as sweet. He’s always seen me as kind.
He calls me a “nice” girl.
The things I want would’ve shattered his perceptions of me, and I always knew it. Even now, the loss of the illusion makes me want to sink to my knees.
“What do you want to know?”
“What are you prepared to tell me?” His features relax.
I suck in cooling air. “Anything. Everything.”
It’s too late for holding back. We all risked too much doing this.
He moves toward me again, this time his movements cautious. His eyes gentle. “Why’d it have to be forced?”
I expel all my breath. He’s right it did have to be. This time at least it did. Even though it would’ve been easier and just as hot with a gentler ménage scene—I’d never have moved past the initial guilt. “That’s not such a simple thing to explain.”
“I got all day, Gabs.” He uses the nickname that reminds me until he’d put distance between us, we’d ended up best friends. “I got a week if you need it.”
“You want to know why I like forced play?” I swallow. That’s harder and also easier than why I needed it with him. “Let’s start with that.” He gives me a smile that urges all my fears to be at ease.
I shut my eyes, trying to break everything down, even just to myself. “Dean would’ve explained that with us it’s not about being abused, or degraded, it’s about trust. About being desired so intensely that it can’t be suppressed, and about being taken care of.”
Abel doesn’t move but his features flicker, like he’s remembering the trust I’d placed in them both. The memory shivers through me too, and as nervous as I am, my pulse speeds. They took care of me. Made me feel so desired—so wanted.
So special.
The most intense and captivating moments of my life. No matter what happens now, I’ll never forget today.
“The thing is, when I’m playing helpless, I’ve planned it. As deeply as I immerse, even at my most frightened there’s this voice at the back of my head reminding me that I chose this, I wrote this scene, I’m safe. I can stop everything with one word. I’m the one in real control. That’s a reassurance I never had and it’s a powerful thing. An addictive thing. A seductive thing.”
My stomach clenches. I’ve done an excellent job of blocking out my past. Of operating mostly as a functional adult. But there are times when my childhood brushes up against me, and I think I’ll never grow out of insecurity.
Of feeling unwanted.
Abandoned.
Abel takes a breath and his gaze sweeps over my face like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Do you ever just make love?”
I think back to when Dean and I first met, when he’d touched me so gently, so cautiously, like I had wings that might burst out of me at any moment and sweep me away. That’d been lovemaking. What we had now wasn’t like that, he no longer had to worry I’d fly away. There was no touching me too hard. But it wasn’t all games. Not at all. “We role-play sometimes, but we have plenty of regular sex if that’s what you mean.”
Abel breathes out and seizes my upper arms again. “I’m only going to ask one more question.”
I hold on to the sleeves of his jacket at the elbows.
“When you wrote those threesome scenes, you imagined them with me all along.”
I grip him harder. He lied. That statement wasn’t a question, to either of us. Even if I hadn’t turned over and over and over in my mind, the two men I love taking me together, we both know there’s only one person Dean would trust with his wife.
If it ever came to this, Abel was the one and only choice.
We’ve done plenty of role-play that hasn’t included forced seduction, and this is why this fantasy had to be. How can I justify to the man I adore that I want someone else as well?
“I did,” I whisper, unable to watch my admission hit, and pull free.
Then run back into the house—to my loving husband.
Chapter Nine
I almost can’t face him but I must. He’s ready for me. Dean lounges against the dining room windows, his shoulders resting on the wall of glass. Aside from his stubble, he’s out of character and dressed again like my Dean in shirt and pants. His feet bare.
My lungs get tight.
He’s a fucking good-looking man, my husband. I fought him for a while in the beginning. How could someone like him, sexy, smart, successful, be so into me?
But his persistence won out over my resistance.
“Abel is in love with me.” I release a breath. There I said it. Dean’s only family, his stepbrother who he loves, is in love with his wife.
That I might love him back is moot—I’m committed to my husband.
Whatever kinky shit we might do is only done with Dean’s blessing, approval and orchestration.
“I know.”
My heart jolts like it’s been hit with a hundred volts.
“You knew?” I grab on to the back of a chair. “You knew how he feels and you let this go ahead?”
“I let this go ahead because I know how he feels.” He leans off the windows. “Because I know how you feel.”
My vision gets spots. I can’t see right. My fingers go numb. “Are you leaving me?”
Did he think handing me over to his stepbrother would lessen the blow? I suck in air. Nothing can lessen this blow.
I married him forever. For better or worse.
He grabs the back of my hair. I hadn’t even noticed him move. My scalp stings.
He knows how I like that.
“Baby.” He yanks my hair. “When do we part?”
My eyes blur. I remember our wedding day, our vows. I meant every last word in the most literal sense the way others might not. Love. Cherish. Obey. “Death. Until death.”
“That’s right, baby.” He shuffles closer. His heat blasts its familiar comforting reassurance into me. “There’s no leaving. Never leaving.”
He kisses me softly.
Tears clog my throat. I turned down his first proposal because I was too afraid to trust in forever. But he made me believe in forever just like he made me believe in trust.
“I’m going to tell you something you might not like.”
I blink and stare up at him. My pulse pounds, making a whirling sound in my head. Hell, there have been plenty of things I’ve told him I knew he wouldn’t like. The difference is, I put mine in notes. He’s about to deliver his up close.
“I knew he loved you the day I came to your office.”
Those phantom electric paddles hit me again. My whole body jerks.
He squeezes my hair harder. Brings me back to focus. “Abel had told me all about you. But the moment you spoke to me I knew he didn’t see you the way I did.” His grip on me is absolute. I couldn’t get away if I tried, and it’s only this man who understands how safe that makes me feel. “You and me, honey, our secrets are the same.”
My vision flashes with everything we’d
ever done together. The way he gets off on commanding me and how I get off on being commanded. I’d never realized there could be a relationship like this.
“I told myself I was the better one for you. That we were meant for each other, but there’s more to it than that.” His grip slackens, and it’s that gentle give from a man who never gives in, that makes my throat thick with fear. “I thought if I had you, Abe would stick around.”
He lets me go, and stumbles back. His gaze slinks from mine. In the three years I’ve known Dean I’ve never seen him ashamed. He’s never been unable to hold my gaze. My memory throbs. I knew Abel long before I knew my husband. We were dear friends and I’d never once met his stepbrother until he came to my work that day. I’d heard about how close they were.
My heart thunks.
I’d also heard firsthand from Penny how jealous she’d been of Dean and Abel. She’d insisted she and Abel get their own place without him. That they’d fought so badly Dean moved to Montreal.
“I’d just gotten him back after Penny. I never expected that you and I would be what drove him away again.” His voice takes on a dry crackle that scrapes along my spine.
I rub my arms, a chill moving through me. Did he ever really want me, or was this all a game? “You knew he wanted me that day at my office?”
“Yes.”
I look away, look around. I remember that day all too well. Remember the way he pursued me, coaxed and cajoled me into “Just one little date.” I drag in air. “Because you didn’t want another woman to take Abel from you again?” My gaze lands on him, and I see him in all his handsome glory—a man who is far out of my league.
Maybe this loss isn’t imagined at all.
He steps closer again. “It’s not like that.”
“How is it?” I jerk back, then stop and swallow. “You love him?”
His presence so close to me is a coercion. It’s impossible not to breathe in the scent of him, to feel his heat so near, his strength just within arm’s reach, and not want to be wrapped up by him. Drawn into the feeling of home, that maybe was never really mine.
“Of course I love him. He’s all I have. I was a kid and lost everything and everyone and he dropped everything to take care of me.”
