RopeMeIn

by Cerise DeLand

  His hands crushed her close and as he picked her up and took her to one of her fine French chairs, he devoured her lips. “Christ, you taste good. Been starved for you all week.”

  “Music to my ears.”

  “How are you?” he asked, his sea-blue eyes drifting to her breasts and the juncture between her thighs.

  She swallowed hard. She’d put the butt plug in her ass for the second time today and with Jed’s chain teasing her clit at the same time, she could have torn Harry’s clothes off in one second. Instead she told him, “I like your birds.”

  He stared at her blouse as if he had x-ray vision to see her hardening nipples. “They been good to you?”

  “Every night.” She squirmed in his lap. “Making all kinds of noise.”

  His left brow ticked up a notch. “That so?”

  “Yes. They say, ‘Where’s Harry? He needs to help us out’.”

  “Hunh. Chatty birds. What do you say back?”

  “I shush them. Then I tell them to ‘keep me happy for now. He’ll put his hands and lips on me Friday night’.”

  “Got that right.” With not much ceremony, he stood up and caught her so she wouldn’t fall. “We’re going for a beer.”

  “Harry?” She pulled him back. “How long can this go on?”

  He turned serious. “Meaning?”

  “Me, coming out to make love to all of you. You three, treating me like a queen. I know it’s not normal for three men to want one woman, even in a county with bad odds for single males. This affair is like playing with matches. One of us is going to go up in flames.”

  He put his big hands on either side of her face then and crooned, “Listen to me, darlin’. We’re playing for everything we can get with you. Hoping you want us three as much. If anyone’s going to get hurt playing with matches, it’s us boys.”

  “How can that be?”

  “You think of yourself as a normal woman. We think of ourselves as normal men. Just because we—” He bit off whatever his next words would have been and shut his mouth. Then he hooked his arm in hers and said, “That’s all I’ll say. Now let me buy you that drink and afterward I am going home.”

  He did as he promised, no more kisses, no more cuddles, one cold beer and then adios. “See you tomorrow night.”

  “Five o’clock,” she told him.

  “Don’t be late. Will goes crazy if you’re late.”

  Okay then. Will, the party planner. The one in charge. The one who has not come to me this week.

  Cara nodded. Exactly what she had known. Exactly why she had to learn more about what she could expect with them.

  And decide if she wanted everything they had to offer.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friday at four-forty-five, Cara pushed in the code to open the MacRae main gate. Solemnly she meandered her tiny truck up the driveway and pulled to a stop in front of the door. Taking her overnight bag, she worried her lower lip that what she had put inside was far too little. True, she had included her shampoo and makeup. But for everyone’s enjoyment, she had included one set of Viennese red satin corset with matching thong and her new baby-blue flannel pjs. Those were just in case she decided to sleep alone. Nothing else.

  Nothing normal to wear to watch a movie. Or eat breakfast. Or go riding.

  Am I now certifiable?

  Maybe so.

  Let’s take a chance on these men and see.

  She swallowed hard, moving forward to shift gears and set the brake, and felt the drag of her pussy chain and the thrust of her ass plug. The bird clamps beneath her sweatshirt dug into her flesh. Closing her eyes, she admitted she loved the sensations. But could she stand more? Did she want to? And why?

  She navigated the walk with a careful step. Her knock on the door was brief, loud.

  Jed swung it open with a smile on his face. “Early. Wonderful. Come on in.”

  Loving the comfort of his hand to her waist as he led her past the front offices toward the country kitchen and family room, she couldn’t calm her fears of the unknown. Even when Harry left his stove to come hug her and welcome her, she had a tough time breathing. The challenge to her peace of mind climbed up a notch when Will entered from the hall where the men’s bedrooms were.

  “Drink?” Will asked, his hazel eyes probing her own.

  Did she look as wary as she felt? “Beer is good.”

  When she had her bottle in hand and they all sat in the family room arrayed at different points on the leather sofas, the men asked her about the progress on the shop. She gave them a few answers. Curt, colorless answers.

  “Harry tells me we’re coming to your grand opening next Saturday,” Will offered.

  “I hope you will. I need you to be there and make the other men feel welcome.”

  Jed smiled. “We’ll set up an account ourselves.”

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “We will buy your lingerie, darlin’,” Harry told her as if it was law.

  “But I can buy my own.”

  “Not anymore you don’t,” Jed insisted.

  She was seeing red. “Why is that?”

  “Because we are your men now,” Will told her. “We want to buy you what you want.”

  “What if I don’t want you to do that? What if I am my own person? What if I hate your taste?”

  Will grunted. “Anything in your shop is what you yourself have ordered. Therefore it follows that you must like it.”

  “Like it, but maybe not love it. Not think that I look good in it.”

  “Prickly tonight, are we?” Jed asked, part good humor, part concern in his tone.

  “Very.” She stood up. Walked toward the kitchen counter and eyed the hallway toward the huge bathroom and bedroom. “I’ve got a few questions for you.”

  Harry and Jed frowned.

  Will sat back, totally at ease, his arm sliding along the back of the leather sectional. “Let’s hear them.”

  Harry inhaled, glancing at her, then at his two brothers. “She still worries one of us is going to get hurt.”

  “Not so,” declared Will.

  “Tell me how that can be,” she demanded.

  “You liked what happened with each of us here that first day you came to us,” Jed declared. “Didn’t you?”

  “I did. But how I like jumping into bed with three different men is an astonishing fact to me.”

  “We understand,” Harry acknowledged.

  “A concept that’s hard to handle,” Will agreed. “The first time, sure. But last weekend, how’d you feel then, honey?”

  She shifted, her birdies, her pussy chain and bullet reminding her that her hours with them all had been unbelievable. Unmatched. “Treasured.”

  Jed rolled to his feet and strode toward her. “Like we wanted you to feel.”

  She watched him make his way around the furniture to sink his fist in her hair, pull back her head, then kiss her hard and fast. Breathless, she had to ask, “How did you feel?”

  “Loved,” he whispered.

  Suddenly, Harry was on her other side, his hand at her nape, his mouth making a trail up her throat to her jaw and her lips. “You are a magnificent woman.”

  A frisson rippled up her spine. She gazed into his baby blues and adored his compliment. “Magnificent men demand a proper match.”

  Will stood before her. “But you are still afraid.”

  Jed said, “Biggest truth is that you’ve made a big difference in our lives. We laugh. We joke together. The three of us had lost that.”

  “We watch flicks without dissecting them,” Harry pointed out.

  “We do the Chicken Dance,” Jed added with a pained expression.

  Will chuckled. “Yeah. We needed a woman to bring out the fun in life.”

  “And the sex?” she led him on.

  “The fun in sex, sure. The little stuff that makes it more than bodies hooking up. Makes it full of meaning. And real excitement.”

  She stepped backward, toeing off her flats, her hand
s ripping her sweatshirt up and over her head, then unzipping her jeans and letting them fall so they could see she wore no lingerie today. In fact, she wore nothing but their gifts. “I’ve surprised myself. That I could make love to each of you. Then to all of you at once. That I could love being spanked. That I could make love to you freely and often.” She gave Will a small smile. “Well, maybe not each of you, but you know I want to try to do you, sweetie, big as you are.”

  Will grinned, as satisfied as a kid. “We were right to want you.”

  “Were you?” She ran two hands through her long hair and shook her head. “I’m not sure. Yes, I can enjoy all your hands on me. And I can revel in the excitement of your odd little gifts to me.” She swept a hand down her body to entice them and knew she was becoming a tease. “I have wanted you every minute of every hour this week when I have been so wild to use these damn things. But I know there must be more.”

  Jed called her name.

  “Please. Let me finish. The birds bite into my nipples and I am a crazy lady. The chain drives me absolutely nuts to put my fingers on myself, but I know you told me that I mustn’t.”

  “Only we make you come,” Will declared.

  “I know. I also remember what you said about the butt plug. That you had more. That they were bigger. And god, Will, I have it in now and I want the bigger one. Soon.”

  Will reached toward her.

  But she put up a palm. “No.”

  “Why not?” he countered.

  “Show me. Tell me the rest of the story. What you’re all into. I know these steel hooks on this belt,” she said as she hooked her thumbs into two of the eight at various points around the leather, “are meant for more than decoration. The box I brought you that first day I had opened mistakenly. I saw the floggers, the paddles, the cuffs of every material. The leather ropes.

  “I saw a harness, black leather, heavy. For a man, I would think. So you see why I want to know more. Want to know it all. Want to see it all. But I have to do it before I agree. If you care for me in any way—”

  “Don’t doubt it,” Jed proclaimed.

  Emotion made her voice tremulous as she looked Jed in the eyes and said, “You have to give me this. This preview. Tell me. Show me. I can’t—” Her old fury at Jed for being macho in her shop washed over her. But only for a minute. “I can’t walk into this blindly. You owe me the opportunity to choose this for myself.”

  “We knew that your husband had abused you mentally,” Jed admitted.

  “By word and deed, he’d led you to believe,” Harry said, “that you were not worthy of one man’s love. Not strong enough to deserve a monogamous relationship.”

  She hated the reminder, but somehow the statement did not gut her as it once had.

  Jed went on. “He took others to bed to taunt you and subdue you.”

  “Maybe so. Yes,” she whispered, once more astonished.

  “There is a difference,” Jed shot back, “between what he did and what we want to bring out of you.”

  She heard him, understood his words, but not his implications.

  “You were such a traditional woman,” Harry told her, “we thought if we romanced you into our lifestyle, that would be best.”

  “That tactic worked in the beginning,” she declared. “Desire is a marvelous aphrodisiac. But town ratios of males to females aside, reality intrudes and I’m grounded in it. I work in it.” She spread her hands in exultation, smiling at them with pained delight. “Even in Paris, I knew of no one woman who was so honored as to have three lovers at once. And no one woman who lived with three Doms who were her masters.”

  She watched them frown. “To live this way, to accept this, I must make my own decision in the cold light of reason. Show me.”

  “Follow me,” Will told her, looking at his brothers before he turned for the hall toward their bedrooms and led them to the end to a door.

  She followed, silent, dreading and welcoming whatever was on the other side. Once she saw, she would have to choose. All three of them, their way. Or none at all.

  Will turned the knob, pushed open the door.

  Soft lighting automatically illuminated the black-walled interior.

  The room was huge, cool and richly appointed in black leather and steel. A wall shelf filled with leather and chain cuffs of all sizes and weights. Another wall of fierce spiked doublets, legs braces and arm sleeves. A dais with one long table, upholstered in black leather and velvet, hooks at every two inches or so. A collection of knives. A contraption she would call a medieval iron maiden. Another she would call a rack, chains pooled upon the cold tile floor. And on another wall hung the item she had seen in the box and had no idea what it might be then. Now she paused to stare it. A swing. A hammock? A device, nonetheless, for a person to sit in, legs wide, genitals exposed. Completely exposed.

  “How often do you use this room?”

  Two of them cleared their throats.

  “We started to build it a few months ago,” Jed told her.

  “We got tired of traveling to another dungeon up in Dallas,” Harry added. “And we have a lot of good friends here in Bravado who chipped in. We’ve built it for a group of us who like this lifestyle.”

  She put a hand to her brow, lightheaded at the admission. “This means that other men and women come here?”

  “Occasionally. Yes,” Harry said.

  “Men I know,” she murmured.

  “Guests are admitted, but only with a member. Everyone who contributed has the code. When members want to come, they send us a text, make a reservation. Once a month we have a party. Any other day, the room is available for private events. It’s all very discreet.”

  “Discreet. Of course, it would have to be,” she concluded. Her gaze drifted to the objects that sent a thrill up her spine. “But what do you say about the chains? The stage? The knives?”

  “Others are into knife play,” Will told her.

  “Some do hot wax,” Jed added. “We’re up for exhibitionism. Ropes, sometimes. Cuffs.”

  “Like in the shower?” she asked.

  “Had those put in for times when you need a little help to stand,” he told her. “We never meant to weird you out, but make love to you in a thousand different ways.”

  “I see,” she said, trying to accept what she was hearing. She was alternately so excited that her pussy and her ass were on fire, and so alarmed that her body clamped down painfully on the butt plug. Did she look like someone they called a natural submissive? Someone who liked being trussed up?

  She had liked it. She did like it. The revelation ripped through her like a firestorm. Who knew she had this in her?

  “And this?” She pointed to the swing. The contraption that held a woman. Her? The idea had her body melting with electrifying desire to be fucked over and over until she couldn’t breathe or think or stand.

  “The swing we bought for you,” Jed told her in a hush. “And us.”

  “It looks very exciting,” she admitted on a whisper, then promptly turned and fled.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She got as far as the kitchen counter and halted. Hands to the cool granite, she squeezed her eyes shut and listened to her body.

  She throbbed with need to return. She wanted them. All of them. Each of them. Not just for the good, hard loving. But for the way they had cared enough about her to prepare for her. To learn about her. To adjust their lifestyle, wrought up in leather and chains as it was, to her. To teach her. Slowly.

  How could she leave them? How could she refuse the wonderful gift of three men who cared so much that—

  She caught her breath.

  One hand covered her mouth.

  Say it, Cara.

  How could she refuse the wonderful gift of three men who cared so much that she now loved them? Loved them for their care of her, their regard. Reveled in their humor and their devotion to her and to each other.

  Standing upright, shaking her hair down her back, she filled with a new p
ride in herself that she could attract three such passionate men. Her heart bubbled over with a new joy in life. A knowledge too, that these three men were ones she could not live without. And she turned.

  There they stood. Side by side. Her three tall, dark, powerful lovers. Anxious, full of foreboding that she was leaving them.

  “Can we go back in there?” She nodded down the hall, hope in her heart that she had not destroyed her finest chance at happiness.

  Each man made a gruff sound of wariness.

  “Know this. If you come with us now,” Jed told her, his voice a hollow wreck, “you’ll never leave us again.”

  “You’ll come to live here,” Harry added.

  “You’ll belong to us,” Will declared.

  “Out there,” she had to demand this one thing, inclining her head toward the front door and the rest of the world beyond it, “I’ll be my own woman. My own boss. No interference from any of you. No hint that here—in there—I am totally yours.”

  “No question,” Jed confirmed.

  “Ours,” Harry stated.

  “To have and to hold,” Will told her.

  Her head spun at the old-fashioned words. “You mean—?”

  “You’ll marry us,” Will said.

  “Ohhh.” She grabbed a breath, knowing this declaration was their proposal. “I will. I definitely will! I’m not sure how,” she blurted, her heart hammering with the crazy idea. “How could I be Mrs. MacRae three times over?”

  The four of them chuckled then.

  “Leave it to us,” said one.

  “We’ve got a preacher lined up,” offered another.

  “We’ve a mind to have babies too, you know,” Will told her.

  “Is that right?” She was so tickled, her breasts tingled at the idea of a baby to suckle there. Heading toward their notorious room, she bussed each man on the cheek as she passed him. “Oh I do want children. Lots of them.”

  “Us too, darlin’,” Harry said. “And each one will have three daddies. We’ll love ’em ’til they have to ride out of here at eighteen just to escape the bear hugs.”

  She laughed, aglow with expectation in her glorious new future.

  “What’s your pleasure, ma’am?” Will asked as she reached the door, her hand on the knob and paused.