“No, no,” El-Mudad cut me off. “With you would be fine.”
There was nothing I liked better about our time with him than the lazy intimacy of lying together, all three of us, with our limbs in a tangle, not speaking, communicating with our bodies alone.
Well, there was almost nothing I liked better.
Neil showed him to the bedroom, though El-Mudad already knew where it was. I tagged along behind them.
“Lunch is going to be quite simple, I’m afraid,” Neil apologized.
El-Mudad laughed. “The first time I was here, I ate macaroni and cheese.”
“Reheated, at that.” I covered my eyes. “I’ll never live that down.”
“I won’t hold it against you, under the circumstances.” He dropped his bag beside the door but didn’t unpack it. “Shall we? If you don’t mind? I’m starving.”
“Well, when you have two percent body fat…” Neil teased him, but I knew that, while he more than appreciated El-Mudad’s incredible physique, he was also intimidated. It was weird, but I kind of liked that. It made me feel like I was even with Neil, somehow. I spent so much time worrying about my weight and measurements and did I look puffy today that I drove myself—and Neil—up a wall. It was a nice change to be the one doing the reassuring, instead of being reassured.
Neil went into the kitchen, but we’d already asked Julia to set up the dining room for three, so I took El-Mudad there. Red-ringed Noritaki china gleamed on the black lacquer table top, and white hydrangeas complemented the burgundy runner. Neil had picked those; he was notoriously finicky about flowers and plants. I’d brought home a potted geranium once on a whim, and he’d made me promise to keep it where he’d never have to see it. It lived at my mom’s house.
“This looks lovely, Sophie,” El-Mudad complimented me, as though he thought I’d done it.
I gave him a confounded smile. “You know I had no hand in this.”
“Ah, yes. Julia.” He danced his fingertips across the back of a chair. “I’d forgotten about her.”
“How could you forget?” My remark gave us both a laugh; when he’d visited us last time, Julia had been just a little too chilly toward him, to the point that Neil had been forced into one of those awkward employer/domestic employee conversations that were way too Downton Abbey to deal with. I shrugged and added, “She really is the best cook we’ve ever had, though.”
“There was a time when you did quite well with meals from boxes and cans,” he teased in defense of my honor. But his tone changed, and his gaze flicked nervously toward the kitchen door. “Is he…”
“He’s fine. Really,” I reassured El-Mudad. “Still in therapy, like, all the time, so if anything—”
“If anything what?”
Neil’s voice startled me, and I turned around guiltily. I should have left it to him to tell, rather than talk about his mental health in his absence.
El-Mudad stepped in smoothly. “I was prying. I asked Sophie about your health. I still worry about you.”
“Yes, well…” Neil cleared his throat and set a large platter on the table, his expression thoughtful. Finally, he went on, “It’s been much easier going now than the last time we saw each other.”
We’d last had a visit from our friend in February, but it had still been too close to the anniversary of Emma’s death. The timing had seemed right when we’d made the plans; what better way to distract us than a few days of good fun and great sex? And we’d had fun, but Neil had been distant. Not knowing his moods the way I did, El-Mudad had worried the entire time that his presence was a nuisance that would send Neil back to the hospital.
“I am glad to hear that.” His smile was small and deeply relieved. “I apologize. I should have asked you.”
“Not at all.” Neil waved it away. “I’m pleased to report that I see my therapist three times a week, my moments of dissociation come less frequently, and all of my shoes have laces, again.”
“Don’t,” I said gently as we took our seats. If anyone else had made the remark, I would have considered it in poor taste, but Neil’s grim sense of humor had been a precious tool in his recovery. Still, sometimes, it felt a bit too raw.
“Olivia has been a blessing in that respect, too. Now that we’ve all adjusted.” Neil reached for a pair of tongs on the platter. Julia had provided us with an assortment of fruit—grapes, orange slices, cute little triangles of watermelon—some lettuce wraps filled with a mixture of quinoa, sun-dried tomatoes, and walnuts, and a variety of cheeses and crackers. We all helped ourselves as we talked.
“And where is Olivia?” El-Mudad asked, glancing around the room as though he would catch a glimpse of her.
“Headed off to London with her grandmother.” Neil tried too hard to sound unconcerned. “So, you have us all to yourself.”
El-Mudad looked down at his plate to hide his fond smile. “I have a difficult time being away from my girls, as well. I’ve just spent two weeks with them. Every minute. And I still miss them terribly.”
Neil cleared his throat softly and changed the subject. “You mentioned that you were starving. I hope you don’t mind the lighter fare.”
“Not at all.” El-Mudad unfurled his napkin and smoothed it across his lap.
“I thought we could go out for dinner tonight. There are some great laid-back options.” I quickly added, “If you aren’t too tired.”
“Do you plan to tire me out, Chloe?” he teased, using the name he called me when the three of us had sex.
I laughed a little, but a thought struck me. “You know… maybe we could stop using that name.” I looked to Neil. “I know it was supposed to create distance or relegate our time together as a role, but I feel like we don’t have that distance, now. Or we shouldn’t. And if we do…”
“It isn’t what you want anymore?” El-Mudad finished for me.
I nodded and reached for my glass of sparkling water, unable to look Neil in the eye. I hadn’t discussed this change with him. With either of them. I worried how they would take it.
Neil reached across the corner of the table and took my hand. He gave it a squeeze. “Too right. As long as El-Mudad doesn’t object.”
I shouldn’t have worried. Of course, I shouldn’t have.
El-Mudad smiled slowly. “This opens the way for a conversation I suspected we would have this week.”
“I’ve suspected the same.” Neil cleared his throat and released my hand. “But shall we save that for the end of the week? Make this a test run, so to speak?”
“A test run for what? All of us together?” My heart did barrel rolls at the thought. “Like, you would be our boyfriend?”
“Yes,” El-Mudad replied with an easy shrug.
But he lived in France. And we lived here. We only saw each other a few times a year. How would it work? How would it be different from what we already had?
The idea of it was intoxicating. The reality was confusing.
“I can see you overthinking this,” Neil said gently. “Nothing will be decided without ample consideration.”
“Between the two of you, especially,” El-Mudad added. “I’ve been in this situation before, and…”
The statement hung between us uncomfortably. We all knew how his marriage had ended. I felt certain that Neil wouldn’t leave me for him, and I knew I wouldn’t leave Neil…but El-Mudad and his wife had probably thought the same thing.
“Sophie,” he said softly, “I love you both too much to rush into this. Let’s enjoy each other this week. We don’t have to make an irreversible decision.”
“Okay.” I smiled gratefully at him. “Now, you have to tell us about your trip.”
Even with the ridiculous advantages life had handed me, I found myself a little envious as El-Mudad described his weeks of chic high-end vacationing in the Riviera. It was the kind of life I loved to fantasize about, and one I could definitely afford, but at the same time, it was one I knew I couldn’t have. Too many things tied me to my life—Olivia, the magazine, my own innate
shame at our wealth. I supposed I didn’t envy El-Mudad’s life as much as I envied his ability to enjoy it guilt-free.
“Perhaps we should go, sometime,” Neil mused. “Or Monaco. Sophie’s never been.”
Like almost everyone in the world, I added mentally. Like El-Mudad, Neil had been born into wealth. He couldn’t understand the working-class mindset in which endless toil made a person virtuous and success made them immoral. On an intellectual level, I understood that wasn’t true, but it was tough to shake that mindset. And while I had no trouble spending money or accepting lavish gifts from my husband, I didn’t like examining that comfort too closely. Up and running away to one of the most expensive cities in the world just because I’d never been there seemed wasteful.
On the other hand, Neil and I had sort of expected to have that life together. He was fifty-three, now. He couldn’t exactly wait for me to reach retirement age to travel the world. And if we waited for Olivia to grow up, he would be seventy before we really got to do anything.
My heart fell. Was this what people meant when they said life happened when you were busy making other plans? Was that why it was on so many coffee mugs? Because that sucked.
“We might go together,” El-Mudad suggested. “I have a beautiful house there, and somehow, I never quite make it for visits.”
“Like our wasted apartment in Venice,” I joked. I still had never been.
“I think we should sell it. Make some new memories somewhere else,” Neil said with forced cheerfulness. He’d bought the apartment for his ex-wife and, apparently, fought for it out of sheer spite. I couldn’t blame him for not weekending there.
“As long as I get to go to Venice at least once.” I wouldn’t bend on that stipulation. But my tone grew serious. “It’s all well and good to talk about running around all over the world, but it’s not practical. I’ve got the magazine, we’ve got Olivia—”
“But you don’t have them tonight,” El-Mudad said with an arched brow.
“It’s not like we can run away to France tonight,” I reminded him.
“We can’t run away to France until Neil learns to speak French properly,” El-Mudad said, looking mischievously at him.
I squinched up my nose in confusion. “What are you talking about? Neil speaks French fluently.”
“Neil thinks he speaks French fluently.” El-Mudad chuckled. “The reality—”
“Oh, all right, all right. Perhaps I…overestimated my skill.” Neil gave a dark laugh, his eyes practically glittering with lascivious intent. “But who says we can’t run away to France tonight?”
Chapter Seven
The recreation Pavillon Français stood in a secluded, quiet part of the compound. It was far enough from the main house that driving was the most comfortable option, and to get there, a person had to know the way. For instance, they would have to know to ignore the posted warnings about high voltage this and utility that.
Neil thought of everything.
While I’d once thought of it as a completely useless, wasteful little structure—we’d even talked about tearing it down—Neil had transformed it into a decadent retreat as a wedding present. Like the real building on the grounds of Versailles, our Pavillon was made of one octagonal center room, surrounded by four “cabinets”, smaller rooms that Neil had dedicated to all sorts of wonderful perversions. We entered the large center room directly—a deviation from the original design—and Neil locked the door behind us. Though each long window and French door was equipped with blackout curtains, they were all wide open, with just the gauzy sheers drifting in the central air—another deviation from Marie Antoinette’s plans, though I knew, for sure, she would have been into it if it had been around in the eighteenth century.
“I’ve never been inside when it’s been so light,” El-Mudad mused, crossing the gold and black sunburst design in the marble floor. He went to a window and pushed the curtain back. “And no one will see in?”
“If they ever have, they haven’t complained,” Neil said, strolling the perimeter of the room, hands in his pockets.
El-Mudad grinned. “Who would complain?”
“It’s very private back here,” I reassured him. “I wouldn’t be comfortable at all if it wasn’t. Especially since my mom lives on the property.”
“What do you think tonight?” Neil asked, nodding toward one set of double doors. “What are we in the mood for?”
There were three options: the bedroom, the bathroom, or the machine room. The fourth was a comfort room, stocked with all the aftercare essentials that might be needed after a session. No sexy shenanigans happened in there.
El-Mudad considered. “Perhaps…no games tonight.”
Neil’s eyebrows rose.
In answer to his unspoken question, El-Mudad went on, “No orders. No dominance. Just the three of us, this time.”
“I’d like that,” I said, looking to Neil nervously. “And…protection?”
“I’ve only been with you.” El-Mudad nodded to us. “And you?”
“I was with Gena in March, but I did get tested,” I told him. “But I’m fine with whatever makes the two of you comfortable. Neil?”
“If it’s down to me, I vote no on condoms,” he joked. He hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me in sharply. I gasped and laughed as he dragged me up on my toes. He teased my earlobe with his teeth and growled, “I love the way you feel. And I know he does, too.”
“Very much,” El-Mudad confirmed.
Conversations like this hadn’t always been easy for me. Even after my first fling with Neil all those years ago, something about the mechanics of safe sex discussions felt clumsy to me. Maybe because every guy claimed “I’m clean, I swear,” and “Come on, you can trust me.” The fact that I could actually trust Neil and El-Mudad went a long way.
“And birth control?” El-Mudad asked.
“Taken care of.” I loved my IUD. The installation had been well worth the benefits. Even though Neil had been through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, we both had this irrational fear that some statistical anomaly would strike us. It had before.
El-Mudad’s eyebrows rose. “Well, then, we seem to be of the same mind.”
“So it seems.” Neil’s hands drifted up my sides then to the buttons of my blouse. He popped one, and another, and another, until the top was loose enough for El-Mudad to push the fabric off one of my shoulders. He bent his head and kissed every inch of skin as he exposed it.
“Shall we go to the bedroom?” Neil’s voice was low, hungry. He wouldn’t have been able to stick to a game if he’d tried.
Without any further warning, El-Mudad swept me into his arms and off my feet, slinging me over his shoulder like a caveman. Which was both adorable and disorienting. I shrieked and giggled, watching the floor pass by with each bouncing step. We entered the bedroom, and he set me on my feet, again. Somewhere on the walk, Neil had lost his shirt.
Yeah, way too eager today for any rules or games.
Neil had done the bedroom in baroque splendor, right down to the gilt-framed mirrors on the ceiling. The bed filled most of the room; mounded with pillows and a duvet so fluffy and thick it could have been a mattress of its own, the scrollwork headboard dotted here and there with anchor points for restraints and a built-in set of gold-plated shackles, it was the ultimate testament to our dedication to pleasure and pain.
A large wardrobe held our various toys, and Neil went to it and threw the doors open wide. “Anything from the trolley?” he joked.
El-Mudad kissed my forehead and left me to join Neil. He looked over the offerings with an amused tilt to his lips. “There are so many choices.”
“We have a whole week,” I reminded him. “Can I use the blue vibrator?”
“You can do whatever you’d like,” Neil said. It was strange to be in this space and not need to ask permission. He located the one I liked—a clitoral vibrator with a bulbous head and scoop-shaped handle—and handed it to me, then selected a medium-sized
glass plug.
“Is that for you, or Sophie?” El-Mudad asked, running his fingers down Neil’s bare spine.
“I was hoping you’d fuck me,” Neil suggested. “While I’m fucking Sophie, perhaps?”
Unbelievably, we’d never done that before. I’d had them both at the same time. It seemed only fair that Neil should get the same experience. My nipples hardened, and I pressed my thighs together. “Oh, yes. Let’s do that,” I breathed.
I had way too many clothes on. All of us did. Neil tossed the plug, a bottle of silicone lube, and some wet wipes onto the bed then reached for El-Mudad. They kissed, their hands flashing between them. Neil fumbled with El-Mudad’s buttons while El-Mudad swiftly unbuckled Neil’s belt. El-Mudad pushed a hand into Neil’s pants, and Neil groaned.
I lost my blouse and my jeans, and when I stood there in my strappy black bra and matching thong, El-Mudad broke his mouth from Neil’s to look at me. “Come here.”
I shook my head. “No. I want to watch you two for a little while.”
The truth was, I loved watching Neil with another partner. It gave me a perspective I didn’t get when it was just us together. Occasionally, we recorded ourselves, but somehow, it wasn’t the same. And when he was with El-Mudad, it was different. Neil had a different way of moving, of touching when he was with a man. I watched with fascination as his mouth worked across El-Mudad’s jaw, and the way he responded to El-Mudad’s hand stroking him.
“I want to suck your cock,” Neil murmured against El-Mudad’s neck, softly biting to punctuate the sentence.
“Yes, please!” I squeaked, clapping my hands a little before I could stop myself.
They laughed and moved to the bed, and I joined them, lying beside El-Mudad as he situated himself on the pillows. From my position, I could look down his body, to where his erection strained against his fly. Neil’s hands moved to the zipper and pulled it down slowly. El-Mudad was totally commando underneath, and I gasped in delight.
“Did you miss it?” he teased, reaching out to run a finger down the line of my bra strap. “Take this off.”
The Sister (The Boss Book 6) Page 10
