For Love of Authority 3
Saints United
Andre "AJ" Johannes fell in love with his college roommate---he just didn't realize it until it was too late. After spending one unforgettable night in Ryder St. Claire's arms, fate forced them apart. But Ryder still haunts his dreams, and AJ's always wondered what might have been.
Seven years later, AJ is starting over. New job, new city, new life—and all of it without his wife and son. Marian divorced him and took sole custody, leaving AJ to wonder if the rest of his life will end up as useless as his shattered marriage.
Little does AJ know he's got a couple of Saints looking out for him. Ryder St. Claire married Lyss three years ago, and the two of them have been searching for their third--- the man who will offer his submission and give them everything they cannot give each other. But can they overcome years of emotional abuse to convince AJ he deserves to be happy?
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 106,811 words
SAINTS UNITED
For Love of Authority 3
Rhiannon Ayers
MENAGE AMOUR
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Amour
SAINTS UNITED
Copyright © 2014 by Rhiannon Ayers
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-747-3
First E-book Publication: December 2014
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2014 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.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
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DEDICATION
To my husband. Thank you for putting up with me and all the other people living in my head. Without your patience, none of us would be here today.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Interlude
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
About the Author
SAINTS UNITED
For Love of Authority 3
RHIANNON AYERS
Copyright © 2014
Prologue
The first gunshot took away his reason for living.
The second gunshot took away his reason for trying.
The third gunshot? That one was self-inflicted.
And it missed.
And that was, perhaps, his most tragic mistake of all.
Chapter 1
“I’m not sure participating in a slave auction is the best way to introduce myself to the community,” Andre “A.J.” Johannes muttered, forehead creased with a dubious frown.
Austin Parker, A.J.’s best friend, raised an eyebrow and gave him an innocent-seeming smirk. “Really? Because I think it’s perfect.”
A.J. sat back, his chair making an annoying metallic shriek as the metal legs shifted on the concrete floor. The outdoor seating area of the small Montrose café was blessedly quiet, which was a rare treat, considering how busy it normally was this time of day. The weather was gorgeous for early September, with cool northern breezes instead of blazing late-summer heat, but there was only one other group, a family of four, enjoying the opportunity to sit outside. The two kids were happily drawing abstract swirls and butterflies on the white tablecloth, while their parents held a quiet, if somewhat heated, argument at one end of their table. They were too absorbed in their own doings to notice two guys having lunch at a table nearby.
Which was good, considering their conversation concerned a slave auction at Austin’s high-end BDSM club.
A.J. looked back down at the invitation in front of him. They’d spent a lot of money printing those things, for sure. The paper was some kind of thick, expensive vellum, heavy and unwilling to bend, even with pressure. The edges were coated in gold—real gilt—and the name of the club had been likewise etched in metallic inks. Gold filigree marked the corners, and a fancy font-face had been used for the verbiage.
Your Presence is Required
For the Club S
Charity Slave Auction
A Charitable Event Benefiting
Street Smartz
To Be Held
On the Twentieth Day of September
At Nine O’Clock in the Evening
A.J. flicked the corner of the invitation with his fingertip, giving his buddy a sideways look. “So, let me get this straight. You signed me up to be auctioned off to the highest bidder as part
of your charity event. An event hosted at your club, which, by the way, I’ve never even been to. You signed me up without asking me, without even telling me, and now you think I’m going to go along with it just because you say so?” He paused significantly. “You seriously think I would do such a thing? Come on, man. What the hell were you even thinking?”
Austin sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his muscular chest. His short, dirty-blond hair caught highlights from the midday sun, making it look like he was the one who’d been gilded. “Honestly? I thought it might make you break out of your shell.”
“How the hell do you figure that?” A.J. demanded.
“Because you need the kick in the ass,” Austin said, unfazed by A.J.’s outrage. “Someone’s got to break you out of this prison you’ve built around yourself. Since you won’t do it, I decided to do it for you.”
“Austin…”
“Did you even open the welcome packet I sent you?” Austin asked, cutting him off.
A.J. rolled his eyes. “Of course not. I told you I didn’t want to become a member of your club, but you gave me a membership anyway. Why would I open the damn thing when I didn’t even want it in the first place?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Austin said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Maybe because your best friend asked you to. Maybe because there’s something in there you really need to see. Something you would have seen four months ago if you’d opened the packet like I told you to.”
He sighed. This was an old argument, a battle they’d been fighting ever since A.J. moved to Houston in the wake of his shattered marriage. Austin had it in his head that A.J. should embrace a BDSM lifestyle the same way Austin had. No matter what A.J. said, no matter how many times they went over this, Austin refused to believe that A.J. simply wasn’t interested.
Maybe because he knows you better than you know yourself, a little voice whispered in his head. Maybe because he’s seen you in the throes of submission, and he knows just how much you want that feeling back.
A.J. shoved that thought down as deep as it would go.
He cleared his throat. “Look, what’s this really about, huh? Why do you keep pushing the club on me? Why do you keep hinting that there’s something I need to see, yet refuse to tell me what it is? What’s really going on?”
Austin studied him in silence for a moment, his steely blue eyes full of concern. “I’m trying to help you, A.J. You’ve got to wake up and get out of this funk. Get out. Meet some people. Like-minded people. Attending the event won’t kill you, and you might just meet someone special.”
“At a slave auction?” A.J. asked.
“Don’t be an ass,” Austin replied mildly. “You know what it means. Sub, slave, pet—they’re all the same in this instance. The word doesn’t matter. The event itself does. Besides, this could be good for you. A chance to get out there and spread your wings, so to speak. Stop hiding yourself away and show off your assets for a change.”
Easy for him to say. Austin was the full package. Killer body, gorgeous face, and brains enough to put Einstein to shame. He looked like a cover model for some preppy clothing line, like American Eagle or Banana Republic. Dressed in his trendy gray graphic tee topped with a crisp white short-sleeved button-up shirt—left open, of course—over a pair of fitted blue jeans, he could walk onto any college campus in America and immediately be surrounded by a dozen hot chicks, all of them flipping their hair extensions and batting fake eyelashes at him.
Looks were deceiving, though. The man was a financial powerhouse, a living mogul, with enough money and influence to do just about anything he wanted. Just looking at him, no one would guess that he was a multi-millionaire with a dozen tech companies, several software patents, and a host of high-end nightclubs to his business credit.
Nor would they guess he was one of the best Doms in the city of Houston.
Next to Austin, A.J. looked—and felt—like a worthless slob. His black hair was long enough to be called “shaggy,” but not because he was trying to be trendy. He’d simply forgotten to get it cut this month. His jeans were wrinkled and frayed at the cuffs, but not because he wanted them to be that way. They were just old. His favorite “nerd” T-shirt, the one that said “C:Dos. C:DosRun. RunDosRun” was now a faded gray instead of black, and his black Sketchers were only “old school” because he hadn’t bothered to buy new shoes in a while. He and Austin were the same age—twenty-eight—yet Austin looked like a prep-school graduate, while A.J. looked like he should be flipping burgers for minimum wage.
Not exactly a comforting thought.
And yet, Austin seriously believed A.J. would fit in at an elite place like Club S? The guy was nuts. Club S might be Austin’s baby, but that didn’t mean A.J. belonged there. Okay, sure, maybe there was a part of him—a desperate, lonely, starving part—that yearned to take that step, to immerse himself in that lifestyle. But just because A.J. was friends with the guy who owned the place didn’t mean he had any business going there. He was an IT nerd, for crying out loud. A code junkie. He was awkward at best in social situations, not suave and cool like Austin. He was happiest sitting in a room surrounded by computer monitors, not exchanging small talk with people he didn’t even know. Give him a software bug to fix, a motherboard to build, a server to integrate, and he was a happy camper. Surround him with real people, and he might as well be a statue.
Not that A.J.’s reasoned arguments mattered to Austin in the slightest.
Austin was still on his soapbox. “You’ve been alone too long, A.J. You need this.”
“I can’t…” A.J. paused, meeting Austin’s eyes for a moment before looking away. “I mean, I don’t think I can do it, Austin. Seriously. It’s not…that’s not who I am.”
A pause.
“It’s who you were when we were together,” Austin said softly.
A.J. flinched. After his marriage fell apart a year ago, Austin had flown out to Virginia to see him. They’d been friends since they were both students at MIT, keeping in touch even after Austin moved to Texas and A.J. moved to Virginia to join the FBI. Upon his arrival, Austin had taken one look at the sad efficiency apartment A.J. called home, and declared they were going out that night. There was a club nearby, a club like the one Austin owned in Houston, and it was high time A.J. sampled it.
Before meeting Austin, A.J. hadn’t even known what BDSM meant. And before that night, he hadn’t understood the draw of the lifestyle. Not that Austin being a Dom bothered him, of course. It just…wasn’t something A.J. was interested in. But that night…
A whirlwind of sights, sounds, colors, scents. A cornucopia of sexual fetishes he’d never known was possible. A veritable candy store of wants, needs, and desires so strong, so addictive, that if he’d had the ability to stay, he probably never would have left. But, even after that night, the night where Austin brought him to his knees and made him want to stay there, he knew he couldn’t afford to lose himself in that lifestyle. No matter how much he wanted it, no matter how much he might need it, he couldn’t afford to take the risk.
He’d lost custody of his son because of one incident of sexual deviance. He couldn’t afford to risk losing everything else, too.
“That was one time,” he said, careful to keep his tone flat, colorless, and devoid of the yearning, swirling emotions that welled up inside him at the memory of the night they’d shared together. “One night. And I thought we agreed to pretend it never happened.”
Austin’s expression was too knowing, too intimate. “Yes, I agreed to that. But only because I thought you would move on. Find someone better. Someone who could meet your needs the way I couldn’t. But you never did, A.J. And it’s high time for you to stop pretending to be someone you’re not, and start embracing who you truly are.”
“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” A.J. said, eyes on the tabletop. “How can you possibly know who I truly am?”
“I know who you’re not,” Austin stated flatly. “Look at you, A.J. When did yo
u become this introverted little computer nerd? What happened to the guy who was going to take MIT by storm with me? You’ve turned into this quiet little mouse, when once you were a veritable lion. How long has it been since you moved here, huh? How long have you been in Houston?”
A.J. winced, wrapping both hands around the bottom of his water glass and watching the condensation pool against his fingers. “Four months.”
Austin nodded once. “Four months. And in that time, how many times have you left your apartment?”
“Do we really have to do this?”
“How many?” Austin growled.
A.J. breathed a silent sigh. “I don’t know. Four or five.”
“If that many,” Austin agreed, his tone gone all hard and condemning. “You hide in that fucking cave of yours, using your computer as a wall between you and the rest of the world. The only time you leave is when I drag your ass out for some food. The only time you talk to people is when they force you to Skype with them, and even then it’s only clients or your other computer nerd friends. You’re turning into a fucking hermit. I don’t like seeing you like that.”
A.J. snorted. “And you thought the way to change that was to sign me up for a fucking slave auction?”
The other man grinned. “Got your attention, didn’t it?” He sobered again, leaning forward with an earnest, pleading look on his handsome face. “Look. I don’t mean to rag on you, okay? I just hate seeing you like this. I know what it’s like…”
A.J. looked up sharply. “Don’t,” he nearly snarled, glaring as hard as he could. “You’ve never been married. You’ve never had a kid. You’ve never watched your whole world burn to the ground because your wife decided she hated your guts. You’ve never had your heart torn out when the judge decided to grant her sole custody of your only son, simply because the bastard had the power to do it. And you’ve never had your job, the one you fought for and dreamed about your whole life, torn from you because your ex-wife spread rumors that got you fired.”
Saints United [For Love of Authority 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 1
