Running to Love 5
Surrounded
Jackie Cutticio has found one of the loves of her life in Ashley Bell, who not only loves her back but is accepting of Jackie’s desire for a third in their relationship, a worldly man. They start their search at the Club.
Alistair Frayne owns the Club and hasn’t forgotten Jackie, who ran from him years earlier despite her strong feelings and her promise to wait. Both are astonished when they meet again. Coincidence or fate?
Alistair has never gotten over Jackie, and she has never forgotten him. Can Alistair accept a ménage, or will his dominant sexual nature preclude sharing Jackie? She dares to hope that this second chance, while being more than she deserves, will spell a fairy-tale ending, for Ashley and Alistair work well as a team, in bed and out. Their deep love for the same woman, returned in kind, may fulfill all of their hopes and dreams as the relationship evolves.
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 42,115 words
SURROUNDED
Running to Love 5
Allyson Young
MENAGE AND MORE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage and More
SURROUNDED
Copyright © 2012 by Allyson Young
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62241-726-1
First E-book Publication: November 2012
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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DEDICATION
To Chris, who thinks I am “a really good storyteller” and can’t believe my husband lets me out of bed. May some of your fantasies come true!
SURROUNDED
Running to Love 5
ALLYSON YOUNG
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
The Club didn’t feel quite the same. It wasn’t the familiar, secure place he’d built to provide somewhere for like-minded individuals to practice their varied sexual proclivities, at least not in this moment in time. He was off-balance and not certain he liked the sensation at all, even if thrills chased up and down his spine and settled at the base of his balls. The game wore on, complete with the ribald comments and jeers against the opposing team, but he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t pay attention to anything other than how time ticked down in his own, far more important game of life. It wasn’t the semifinals. This was for the big brass ring.
Alistair watched as his future walked through the door of the Club. At least he hoped it was his future. Oh, he had fought against the idea, struggled with it ferociously, if only for a short time. He’d distracted himself by putting his nose in other people’s business, like Jace’s and Rowan’s not an hour ago, although he’d enjoyed that. And he had to be honest in admitting that being a party to Lacey and Greg’s last hurrah before they got down to the business of marrying and making babies had been a privilege. He’d failed spectacularly at reading little Alex Desjarlais on a night long ago, however, and three lives had nearly been wrecked. He thought he’d never forgive himself for being otherwise occupied that time, still mooning over the little blonde who had just come in, actually, all because her big brother Dave had come to visit and triggered his loss. Jackie Cutticio. One of the kids in that big Italian family who lived next door, the vivacious one, the one whose brother was his friend and comrade-in-arms. She’d been too young for him, and he had hidden his interest, successfully he’d thought, until that one time he and Dave had come home on leave.
Dave was initially pissed at him because he knew about Alistair’s sexual proclivities and was naturally protective of his lovely little sister. But his friend had been quick to realize that Alistair hadn’t really looked at another woman in all those intervening years. Oh, he’d trained some, and fucked a lot, but all without the emotional component that shone through when he looked at Jackie. Dave had said he’d have had to be blind not to see it. Alistair had seen her grow up and really liked the kid, even when he’d been an obnoxious one himself, much older and condescending. Her teen years had made him question his morality, and he had put as much distance as possible between them whenever he chanced to be home from his job and she was around. A mature, twenty-five-year-old man shouldn’t have noticed a fourteen-year-old, let alone felt those things for her, and certainly not fantasized doing certain things with her, to her. A normal man shouldn’t have wanted to crack her little boyfriends’ heads like a walnut or felt such absurd jealousy when she and her friends laughed and giggled and did all those things girls did together. He so wanted that attention for himself. But Alistair was nothing if not solid in his values, and he carefully concealed his interest and avoided her. That was probably why Dave hadn’t beaten the shit out of him and had even given his half-assed blessing when he saw Alistair’s reaction to Jackie that night.
But blessing or no, the nineteen-year-old Jackie had taken one look at him and it was like all his dreams came true. Her eyes had gone wide and then were demurely lowered, and there was no false modesty to it or any game playing. Alistair recognized
a potential submissive from a mile away, and his Dom persona, never far from the surface, emerged and took charge. He fixed on Jackie and without a thought to the immediate future seduced her. He essentially unleashed her sexuality in the three days and two nights they had together, dominating her, giving her erotic pain, and fucking her until they were both senseless. And she had welcomed everything he’d dished out, still with her irrepressible spirit intact. That part of her was probably what he had missed the most, as foreign as it should have been, because it challenged his control. Then he went back to his job, his soldiering, and she wasn’t there, waiting for him as promised, when he was honorably discharged.
Dave told him she got scared when his parents started to pressure her to find a man and settle down and start raising bambinos. It wasn’t the life she wanted, and Dave was probably the only one in the family who truly understood that. However, he also diffidently explained Jackie had confessed something to him before she went off to college, something Alistair had somehow missed, hadn’t known about her. It nearly destroyed him to realize he hadn’t recognized what she really needed, and it threatened the hell out of him as a Dom. Not that he judged her. He accepted honest, consensual sexuality in any form. It was just that he had been blind and self-centered where she was concerned.
Jackie told Dave she was bisexual and that she’d been aware of it for years, even if she tried really hard to hide it. Alistair hadn’t taken the news well, he could admit that now. His possession of her had spawned total possessiveness, and he could never have imagined sharing her back then, and she’d known it. Jackie had read him better than he’d read her, and his ego had taken a devastating blow. Yes, he could admit that now. But back then he’d pretended his heart hadn’t been broken. He had taken his hurt pride and his savings and his knowledge and opened the Club, never once asking Dave where Jackie had gone. And Dave kept silent, letting Alistair take his licks like a man, smothering his feelings and pretending it didn’t matter, that he could just move on and have a life without her. And he had created a life for himself, if one that was rigid and sterile and joyless. He at least felt competent and necessary in providing a place for like-minded individuals to attend and act on their interests. There were only certain times that he forgot himself and got lost in the memories and longing.
When Ashley Bell had given him two names to vet all those years later, to ensure their suitability as potential Club members, he’d been poleaxed. She had been in Tulsa all this time, and he hadn’t known it. His goddamned pride had kept him aloof from everyone or maybe he would have asked Dave about her later, when it didn’t hurt so much. But he didn’t because he still hurt, and he pretty much drowned in despair upon learning about her proximity. He might have had another chance! Ashley had met her and was claiming her, bringing her to the Club, and he forecast that his intense need would literally kill him. But he could find no adequate reason to bar Ashley’s latest love interests, and he soon found out that Rowan wasn’t of interest to her at all. Just Jackie.
It had been awkward, to say the least, and he’d dithered and blithered like a little girl when they met again. Jackie pretended she didn’t know him, and Alistair had taken his cue from her response, although it had gutted him just to see her again and watch her leave with Ashley and goddamn Max Brewster. Good old Max. The threesome king. The one who never seemed to manage a relationship that lasted more than a night and hardly ever without a party of three. Or four. Although Max had shown his true colors of late and Alistair understood him far better, he hadn’t forgiven him. He’d never forgive him. Max’s Domme was better with the single tail than Alistair was, and that was saying something. But this woolgathering and what-ifing wasn’t making things any easier, and it was the final countdown.
Ashley had approached him privately some months later, and he’d acted like an outraged maiden aunt when she told him she knew about him and her girl and that she was willing to share with him. His reaction had actually made her laugh, and she’d walked away saying he knew where to reach her if he changed his mind. It had taken maybe a week, actually five days, before he capitulated and had a detailed conversation with Ash, who’d been pretty kind to him, considering. Then Jackie agreed that he join her and Ash as their third, kind of like a trial, maybe an audition, and it was a measure of how far he’d fallen that he’d jumped at the opportunity. Pride definitely goeth. Or maybe it was just a measure of who held all the pieces of his heart in her little hands and probably didn’t even realize it. He could only hope she would put him back together.
He took another swallow of club soda and again wondered if he could do it, go through with it. He was a Dom for god’s sake, an experienced one who started up and ran this club right after he was discharged from the military. He relished being in control, craved it, and knew little else. And here he was, about to embark on a sexual adventure totally foreign to him despite his varied experiences over the years. He had shared women and dominated women, although he didn’t live the lifestyle full time. That would be hard to do without a full-time sub, and he had never considered a long-term relationship after Jackie. But he’d never been with two women where one was not submissive and the other was the submissive love of his life. His cock assured him he was totally up for it, no pun intended, but it was so freaking different! Shit.
Ashley moved toward him, lean and striking with those cool eyes and titian hair, confidence showing in her loose-limbed stride, and he worked hard at maintaining his poker face. He could do this. He had said he could, and he would. Jackie hung back, her sweet, expressive face mirroring her own reservations, and Alistair’s gut clenched even as his shattered heart lurched. He worried that she had lost her spirit, and he hadn’t known how to ask Ashley about that. He got to his feet.
“Evening, Alistair.” Ashley’s low voice somehow carried over the noise of the game on the big screen.
“Ashley.” Alistair moved past her to stand over Jackie, who immediately submitted, casting her eyes down, clasping her hands as if in prayer before her. Her light blonde hair was like a halo around her head, highlighting her angelic appearance, although Alistair knew appearances were very deceiving. There was a huge difference between buying safety with compliance and showing respect, and Alistair’s spirit soared when he recognized the latter in Jackie’s response. He set a finger beneath her chin and gently lifted her face until he could stare directly into her eyes, the dark blue of violets. She looked back at him, unblinking, and there was no weakness to be found there. His heart swelled right along with his cock, and mended a little. A submissive with spirit, just as he remembered. He could definitely do this. “Do you remember your safe word?”
“Afghanistan.” Her musical voice reflected even in the one utterance, and he just managed not to throw her over his shoulder and make off with her and to hell with Ashley. He throttled his caveman self back another notch.
“You may well need it tonight, honey. This is going to take some adjusting to, and I want you to use it whenever you feel overwhelmed, is that clear?” Alistair felt her safe word was more for his benefit that hers in that moment because he was so overcome with his need for her that he worried he would be unable to read the situation and pick up on the cues like he usually did. Like he failed to do on that weekend so many years ago. A flicker of anger glimmered in the recesses of his mind, suggesting that she held part of the responsibility by withholding her desires, but he snuffed it out. For now.
“I understand.”
He turned to Ashley, who watched them both with utter calm, but Alistair saw the love and devotion to Jackie in her eyes, the trust of the confident other half who knew where her future lay. Ash was doing this for Jackie, who truly sought a committed ménage relationship, and he wondered at her ability to be so selfless, at the lack of jealousy. She totally knew her sweetheart, trusted her, cared about her enough to do this for her. He needed to take a page from her book because if he had to share Jackie, he would. He was going to establish himself in this relati
onship, carve himself out a role, because she wasn’t getting away from him again. There would be three confident thirds in this relationship.
“I have a room ready.”
Chapter Two
Jackie accompanied Ashley and Alistair through the green door and into the private, scene, and viewing rooms at the back of the Club. She hadn’t been back here often, partly because it awakened things in her she didn’t want to pressure Ash to fulfill, but primarily because this was Alistair’s territory. The irony of meeting the woman she’d longed for all these years while struggling with such censure, and having that woman be a member of the Club owned by the one man she had never forgotten and who could never be replaced in her heart, well, it was indescribable. Cops seemed to think there was no such thing as coincidence, and one on this scale? Jackie dared hope, dared to imagine that Alistair could become part of this wonderful thing she had with Ashley, even if this had been set up as a one-off. Because she had never stopped loving him, and running from him, not even giving him a chance to hear from her lips what she’d confided to her brother, had been the absolute height of cowardice. Oh, she’d only been nineteen and anxious and worried about her sexual orientation and the implications of that within her family, but it hadn’t stopped her from spending a weekend and half a day with Alistair. Doing things, learning things that set free her sexuality from a different viewpoint. She had crushed on him since her preteen years, worshipped him from afar, but never dreamed he would notice her. To learn he had held back and done the honorable thing didn’t surprise her, only made her regret the disparity in their ages, even as she struggled with the certainty that she wanted both men and women. Yes, she had wanted it all and hadn’t known how to tell him. She had been afraid of his response, that he wouldn’t be able to cope, and he’d been gone so long overseas. It had torn her up to have him leave that day. Her mind had played tricks on her until her confidence and memory of his certainty that they were destined eroded like sand in a driving rain. There hadn’t been any letters or phone calls to sustain her either because Alistair’s work had been top secret. Jackie so regretted her immature weakness but had been powerless against it. Her family pressuring her to be a good girl and marry and all the rest of it had been the final straw, so she decided to follow her original career plan to become a teacher, go to college far from home, far from anyone who might know her and suss out who she really was. She knew she had hurt Alistair, and more than just his pride, and wondered if he could forgive her, if she could make it up to him. Because she had always reserved a place for him in her heart.
Surrounded [Running to Love 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 1
