by Diane Leyne
Club Libertine 1
Changing the Rules
At twenty-one, Michelle Edwards loved her boyfriend Mac Whelan and his best friend Sean O'Mally. The three of them lived happily together until one night, Mac invited Sean to join them in a ménage. Michelle enjoyed it, but because of her upbringing, her feelings scared her and she ran away from the men she loved.
Ten years later, to pay a debt and save her grandparents' home, Michelle reluctantly agrees to be their sub for a month. The sex is hot, but the men hold her at a distance, especially Mac. And something else has changed. The men are now Doms at the city's notorious Club Libertine and expect her complete submission.
She realizes quickly that she still loves them, but do they just want revenge because she left them, or is there a chance for all three of them to be happy again?
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 30,858 words
CHANGING THE RULES
Club Libertine 1
Diane Leyne
MENAGE AND MORE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage and More
CHANGING THE RULES
Copyright © 2013 by Diane Leyne
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-666-9
First E-book Publication: March 2013
Cover design by Christine Kirchoff
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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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 SG, thank you for being such a good friend for over thirty years!
And to the “other Diane,” your constant encouragement and support mean more than I can say.
To all my fellow Sirenistas, you guys rock!
CHANGING THE RULES
Club Libertine 1
DIANE LEYNE
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
Present day
Michelle was going to kill her sister when she got home. She had just flown across the country. Thank goodness she had airline miles, otherwise she couldn’t really have afforded the flight, not to mention paying off her sister’s debt and making sure that their grandparents’ home didn’t get foreclosed on.
Serena was twenty-one years old, old enough to know better. And what had she done with the $25,000 she had borrowed from Mac Whelan? Mac Whelan, why on earth had she borrowed from him? Why not go to a regular bank? Why not come to Michelle? She had told herself she was never going to see Mac again. She had avoided newspaper articles about him. She’d turned off the television when 60 Minutes profiled him as one of the top thirty-five under thirty-five.
There was no question about taking time off from her job. She had just finished articling and should be slaving away as an associate in the large law firm where she articled, but when she asked for a few days off, they had refused, so she quit. As annoying as her sister was, she couldn’t refuse to help her, especially when their grandparents’ home was in jeopardy.
So here she was, in a cab, headed toward his head office in the building that bore his name. She’d had to sell pretty much everything she owned, her car, her condo, everything except the clothes she needed to wear to job interviews when she got back to the city. In fact, all of her remaining worldly possessions were sitting in that small, cheap motel room near the airport.
And now she was in a cab on her way to see him for the first time in almost ten years. She’d given the address she’d gotten from her sister to the cabby, and after a quick stop to deposit her bags and a cheap motel, she was now on her way into the city to see the man she had once thought she’d be spending her life with.
* * * *
Ten years ago
She was going to university, working on her bachelor’s degree in business and working part time to pay the bills. She was just starting her last year and looking for a part-time to pay the bills. He was four years older, with a master’s in computer engineering and trying to get his IT start-up company off the ground. He was looking for a student who’d work cheap. Michelle needed the cash. She wasn’t one of those rich kids on a free ride. She had a partial scholarship, but still the tuition was crippling for her grandparents. They still were raising her younger sister Serena. They’d taken the sisters in when their parents had died in a car crash. No one could have loved their grandchildren more, but sometimes she wished that they’d been allowed to go to a regular school. But Grandma Martha hadn’t liked the modern world much and homeschooled her granddaughters.
So Michelle made as much money as she could at part-time jobs. She had no time for the usual socializing. Besides, Michelle sometimes found it difficult to relate to her peers. She was naturally reserved, and because of her upbringing, she didn’t know how to interact with the opposite sex. She’d had virtually no interaction with boys growing up, and her grandmother had drummed into her that a lady waits until marriage to give herself to a man. And regardless of what she sees on television, she does not enjoy it.
So Michelle went off to the big city totally unprepared for college life. Her grandmother had tried to
convince her to stay at home, or maybe go to one of the local colleges, but Gramps had put his foot down. Michelle had tested off the charts. She had aced her SATs and could go to her pick of schools, and he thought it was time she spread her wings.
So here she was, finishing her last year, with no friends, no job, and no social life. She was twenty-one years old and almost as innocent as she had been when she went off to school.
She’d been accepted into graduate school, and she needed money. So instead of going home to a farm far from any city and from any possibility of a job, she scanned the boards at school looking for some way to earn money. She’d been looking for a week, but each time she checked the job board at the student employment center, there were either no jobs she was qualified for, or all the little fringe thingies with the contact phone number were all torn off and by the time she called, the job had been filled. Finally she got lucky. There was a posting from another graduate student. It had just been posted and no one else had seen it yet because it still intact. The per-hour pay wasn’t great, but it promised long hours, so she could earn enough by working the ten to twelve hour days it promised.
She needed a job badly. She looked around and then did the first semi-dishonest thing of her life. She pulled the entire ad off the board and tucked it into her purse, hurrying out of the center before anyone noticed.
* * * *
Mac Whelan was looking for someone who could work hard and work long hours. He didn’t party either, but that was because of his single-minded dedication rather than any sort of principles. He decided what he wanted and then went after it with a laser focus. What he wanted right now was to get his new business of the ground, and to do that, he needed to hire some help. There was only so much that he and Sean could do on their own, especially since Sean was working full time now and could only help Mac when he was off shift.
And then he met Michelle. Technically, Sean saw her first as he was rushing out the door, called in for a last-minute shift when one of the other patrolmen came down with the flu. He was actually supposed to do the interview of her, but he’d completely forgotten that she was coming over when he got the duty call.
He was heading out when he saw her coming up the steps. He did a double take when he opened the door just as her hand was poised to knock. He wasn't sure which one of them was more startled. He knew he stood there for the longest time just staring at her until she started to blush.
Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how you looked at such things, he saw Mac walking towards the house. Mac hated interviewing and had only reluctantly agreed they needed to hire someone. He didn’t like a lot of people, but, especially with Sean taking extra shifts to be able to finance things, they needed the extra help, cheap extra help.
Sean would have given anything not to have to go, but duty called. He thought it was unlikely that Mac would hire the comely grad student, but Sean had her phone number, and would ask her on a date at his earliest opportunity.
“You must be Michelle. I’m Sean and I’m late for work. That’s Mac. He’s doing the interview.” He turned to Mac. “This is Michelle, you are interviewing her. I have to run.”
He bounded down the steps and over to his battered ten-year-old car and sped off.
Mac scowled after him and then turned to the woman on his veranda, prepared to tell her to leave and come back the next day when Sean would interview her.
But as he walked up to her, something changed. Mac looked at her and his mouth went dry. He normally wasn’t the most articulate man, but when he laid eyes on Michelle, his limited small talk dried up completely and he just looked at her standing at his door with the ad in her hand. He was smitten.
She held out her hand and Mac took it. From her expression and her shy demeanor, he suspected she was a virgin. She had trouble meeting his eyes but she tried with a touch of desperation to convince him that she was the right person for the job.
Even as he told himself that she was all wrong and she’d just be a distraction, he found himself offering her the job and they arranged that she'd start first thing the next morning. When he stood up to walk her out, she leaned over impulsively and kissed him on the cheek. As he watched her walking happily down the steps, she turned and waved at him and that was it. He was a goner and he knew it, gave into it and embraced it. And when he went back into his apartment and into the bathroom to ease his aching cock, he was already plotting how he would seduce his new assistant.
He had never felt that way before about a woman. He liked women and he loved having sex with women, preferably in a ménage with his best friend Sean, but it was all about the physical, not the emotional satisfaction. The last thing he needed in his life right now was a virgin temptress taking his attention away from his work, but now that she had presented herself at his door, he wasn’t going to stop himself from having her.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from working her twelve hours a day. But when the workday was done, he set out to win her over. Every penny he had was going into his business, but he knew all the best things to do for free or at least cheap, from walks in the park to visiting museums. She fell hard and fast for Mac.
The next day, Michelle found she liked him immediately. He put her at ease in a way she rarely was with attractive men. He made her laugh and feel beautiful. She wondered what it would feel like if he kissed her.
Sean was tall and blond with an amazing body, but he was also laid back and easygoing with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He looked like a surfer dude, but he was as sharp as a tack and he carried a gun. She was shocked to find out Sean was actually a cop. He hadn't been wearing a uniform that first day. He spent his spare time helping out his buddy and hoped some day to go into the business full time, but police work was satisfying, in its way, and it paid the bills..
Mac was dark and intense and equally tall, with burning black eyes that seemed to bore right into her. From the moment they met, Mac made it clear that he wanted Michelle. And Michelle found she wanted him, too. But she was also attracted to Sean as well and sometimes wondered what it would have been like if she had spent time with him first, but mostly she tried to put such thoughts out of her head. According to her upbringing, she was going to be damned if she gave into her feelings for Mac. The fact that she had feelings for both of them made her some kind of unredeemable trollop, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d met Mac first and it was to Mac that she owed her first allegiance
Over the next few weeks, she learned a lot about the two friends. While were both tall and athletic, towering over her five feet four inches, their personalities were as different as their looks. They grew up in the same poor neighborhood and had been like brothers since they were toddlers, and Sean’s mother babysat Mac while his single mother went out to work. Sean came from a large and boisterous family, and one more child, especially one as quiet as Mac, was no trouble at all. By the time Mac was old enough to understand, his mother drummed into him that he had ruined her life. If he hadn’t been born, she would have been someone. When he was ten, she’d gone out to work and never come back. Sean’s family had convinced social services to let them keep Mac. But as a result, Mac had what Sean called “trust issues.”
Sean, his mother, and now Michelle were the only people Mac ever trusted.
* * * *
Sean came home from work expecting to hear that Mac had told Michelle she couldn’t have the job and he was ready to call her and offer his condolences and a shoulder to cry on. Her qualifications were adequate, but clearly there were a number of better applicants out there. He had only agreed to interview her because of the desperation that had come across during their brief phone call.
Even though they were in a hurry to hire, he was sure they’d have more and better applicants and Mac was notoriously picky. He was shocked at Mac’s vehemence.
“Wait until you meet her properly. You’ll love her, too. She’s perfect for us."
“I've seen her resume, pal. She’s at best okay for us
.”
“I'm not talking about her resume. Sean, I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. I need her. Is this love?” The last words were almost a whisper and then a blush suffused his face. He turned away from Sean and added, “She seems like a very nice young woman who will work hard.”
Sean almost laughed at the agonized look on Mac’s face, but knew his friend was in pain. He was so closed off emotionally because of his upbringing and didn’t trust easily. Sean had never seen him like this over a woman before. He felt a sudden burst of jealousy. He’d seen her first.
“Okay, Mac, you’ve convinced me. I can’t wait to meet her.”
The next day, Sean made sure he was downstairs when she arrived. He had to work, but she was due at eight and he had to leave at eight thirty, but he wasn't going to miss Michelle this time. He’d been attracted from the brief glimpse of her yesterday. She must be something to throw Mac for a loop like this. If she was some kind of slut or opportunist looking to take advantage of Mac, Sean would soon find out and get rid of her. Everyone thought of Mac as the hard-ass and Sean as the sweet dreamer, but Sean could be every bit as tough as his buddy. Whereas Mac held himself close emotionally, Sean let himself be ruled by his passions and could be your best friend or your worst enemy but he had learned to conceal his volatile emotions under a cloak of bonhomie.
