by Nia Farrell
Damn, they hurt. Air hisses between my teeth. I clamp them tight enough to stop my strident, unspoken pleas for mercy. Still, a whimper escapes me.
“No clit clamp tonight,” he tells Nico, adjusting the tension until I can breathe again. “She’s hypersensitive. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work her up to the clover clamps. Alligators may be it.”
No clit clamp. I want to sob with relief.
J.T. flicks my nipple with his fingernail and smiles darkly when the pain steals my breath. “Come,” he says and leads me to the St. Andrew’s cross. Nico follows, bringing four fleece-lined leather cuffs, one pair for my wrists, one for my ankles, tooled in green leather to match my collar.
“Look,” Nico tells me. “See what else he’s had made for you. What do you say to him, sweetheart?”
“Thank you, Master. They’re perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” J.T. whispers in my ear. His hand at my back, he guides me into place, facing the device. Nico cuffs my wrists and ankles. J.T. secures them so that I’m standing spread-eagled against the cross.
A blindfold goes on next. The black silk against my fair skin and ginger hair pleases them greatly. One of them—Nico, I think—takes my hair and drapes it over one shoulder, exposing the length of my back. J.T. starts out slowly, warming me up with a paddle before moving to a deerskin flogger. At some point, the tears don’t matter. The pain transmutes into pleasure, and my mind transcends my body.
I’m pulled back to awareness by Nico telling J.T. to stop.
I don’t know how long I was gone or where I’ve been for however long I’ve been out of it. I don’t know whether I went to the place where I go during hot water meditation or to the realm known in the BDSM community as “subspace.” The play had progressed to the riding crop and cane and I hadn’t even known it, not even when I seemed to respond to J.T.’s questions. It’s like my mouth was answering on autopilot while I was off somewhere on an unplanned flight.
They take me down from the cross and cradle me like a deviant’s Pieta. J.T. is beside himself, knowing he’s gone too far. Nico tries to console us both. He clears the way for J.T. to carry me to our bedroom and tuck me into bed.
What follows is aftercare. Hours and hours of it. Blankets, chocolate, bottled water, juice. More chocolate. More fluids. Two pairs of hands checking, touching, applying ointment, smoothing hair. I want to drift, but Nico won’t let me. He won’t let J.T. leave us either. Tonight, he’s staying here with us, in our bed, because that’s what I need.
Not like this, I want to tell him, and yet part of me understands that this might be the way it needs to happen. And so I keep silent. I say nothing beyond my responses to their questions, other than to ask for another square of dark chocolate from time to time.
Yeah, I’m shameless like that.
Sometime around midnight, they finally let me fall asleep between them, Nico at my front, J.T. at my back.
At three a.m., J.T. wakes up screaming.
Chapter Six
“It’s okay, sweetie. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
Over and over again, I reassure him, but J.T. is so far gone, I don’t know what it will take to bring him back to us. “Please,” I beg him. “I love you. I love you. I love you, and it hurts me to see you like this. You don’t want me to hurt. J.T.? You’d never deliberately hurt me. You’d never hurt either of us. We know that. Just come back to us, sweetie. Come back to the ones who love you.”
“Fuck,” he chokes out, his eyes wild, his haunted gaze caroming between Nico and me. “Fuck. Fuck. What did I do? What did I do?”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “You’re here. With us. You’re safe.”
J.T. refuses to be consoled. “What about you?” he challenges, twisting his mouth in distaste as words spew from it. “How safe are you, chica? What happened tonight—”
“Will never happen again.” When I reach for him and cringe in pain, he withdraws even further. Shit. What now?
I try reasoning with him. “No one could have foreseen that I’d trip out like that,” I tell him. “Now that we know, we’ll put safeguards in place. We’ll find my limits and stick to them. Problem solved.”
J.T. shakes his head, still in denial. He’s scared and feeling dangerous, guilty, unworthy. The blood is back on his hands.
By this time, his back is to the wall. Literally and figuratively, he’s withdrawn as far as he can. With nowhere to go and nowhere to hide, he feels threatened. That makes him as unpredictable as a jungle cat and potentially just as dangerous, given his military background and mixed martial arts training. One wrong move on my part and he could hurt me before his conscious mind registers what the fuck he’s doing.
“J.T.,” I say softly, slowly. I approach him the same way, keeping my empty hands where he can see them, palms up in supplication. “Whatever you’ve done or think you’ve done, that was then. This is now. You’re a good man. A better man. You’ve got to stop punishing yourself. Can’t you see, you’ve done penance enough?”
The sad thing is, he doesn’t. I know what his soul remembers, how he’s been trying to do things on his own. Stubborn, foolish man, he’s been coming back without us, as if he doesn’t feel worthy of us. The guilt from our past lives together is eating him alive.
Sweet Jesus, this has to stop.
“Nico.” I command his attention, but really, I’m speaking to both men. “Have you told J.T. that you forgive him?”
The two of them look at me, unspoken questions in their eyes. Suddenly, I feel tired. Drained. I hate that I have to take them where we need to go, but, fuck, they’re like lost boys, clueless, looking to me for direction.
“The last time we were together, it wasn’t good,” I tell them. “Nico was a Cherokee woman. She’d been brutalized. She was hurt. Bleeding badly. She was so ashamed, she begged to die. She asked me, and I helped her.”
Both of them are staring at each other now, trying to remember.
“I was arrested,” I tell them. “Whipped. Thrown in the stockade.” Remembering the beating that Nico had taken in my place, I look at him with new eyes. The son of a bitch had been paying me back.
Humbled, my throat grows closed with unshed tears. More memories come flooding in. Once more I feel the anger. The shame. My hopelessness. My disgust.
“They’d have hung me if she’d been white,” I manage to choke out. “Knowing that they wouldn’t, the man who raped her said nothing. The man responsible went free. But not really,” I whisper, turning to J.T. “Oh, sweetie, it’s been long enough. Don’t you understand that we can forgive you, we do forgive you, but only you can forgive yourself?”
Nico is the first to move. Leaning over me, he presses a kiss to J.T.’s lips. “I forgive you, brother,” he tells him, his voice rough with emotion. “It’s time to let it go.”
“J.T.,” I say softly, hopefully, “I don’t know your experiences in this lifetime. I don’t remember all of our pasts. How can I make you understand that as long as there is life, there’s hope? That you can rise above whatever it is that’s trying to drag you under? There are people who love you. Who’ll fight for you. Who’ll die for you, if need be, because you’re worth it. You hear me? You are worth it!”
By this time I’m beating his chest and yelling. I’m not too proud to beg.
J.T. resists, but only for a moment. I realize that I’ve managed to reach him when, instead of pushing me away, he gathers me to him and clings to me like a lifeline, burying his face in my neck and quietly sobbing. I feel his heart breaking and will stay here as long as he needs me if it means that I can help him pick up the pieces.
Eventually, we fall asleep. There are no more nightmares, no more episodes, no more revelations. The sun is well up when I come awake in the middle of nestled bodies and tangled limbs.
I am instantly aware of a terrible craving for chocolate and the urgent need to pee.
“Guys,” I whisper. “Nico. I have to go.”
Dark cocoa eyes
open, underscoring my next most pressing need. Void, then eat.
J. T. seems dead to the world right now. I start to roll away from him, and the hurt from the beating I took hits me. “Nico,” I whisper. “Fuck. I don’t think I can move.”
I feel like a rehab patient when Nico pulls me across the mattress and helps me stand. Everywhere he touches, fresh pain blossoms. Fortunately, my front is unscathed. Nico kneels. Allowing me to loop my arms around his neck and shoulders, he carries me piggyback to the master en-suite and sets me on my feet.
The mirror shows a walking disaster. I can’t let J.T. see me like this. I empty my bladder, then ask Nico to come in and brush my hair. I could really use a shower, but J.T. needs to sleep. Nico lifts me to stand in the tub, where he gives me a sponge bath that at least helps me feel human.
I brush my teeth next and banish my morning mouth while considering the need for chocolate toothpaste, thinking there’s a market for it. I don’t care that the weather is unseasonably warm. It’s November, and I’m having hot cocoa for breakfast.
J.T. trudges into the kitchen when Nico’s putting the first strips of bacon onto a plate lined with paper towels. The eggs are nearly done, a Southwestern scramble that would be an omelet in someone else’s kitchen. Our favorite black bean salsa and a package of shredded cheddar are on the island where we typically eat breakfast, saving the dining table for more formal meals.
“Morning,” J.T. greets us, letting us fill in the blank.
“Good morning,” I tell him. “Did you get some sleep?”
I swear I see a blush tint those caramel cheeks of his. His grin is almost sheepish. “Yeah,” he says, wonderment in his voice. Clearly, he’s still processing.
At least he’s not fighting it.
“Good,” I say. “Let’s eat. Relax. Dial back a bit. Just take things as they come. There’s no pressure, sweetie. You’re here with us, and we’ve got all day. Tonight, too, if you can stay.”
I eat standing on one side of the island, while J.T. and Nico sit across from me. Despite my fucked up back, I’m in heaven. I have tasty food, yummy men, and a cup of premium chocolate mocha.
J.T. insists on doing dishes since Nico cooked. He takes his time, then joins us in the living room. Nico has rearranged the furniture, shoving the coffee table against the far wall and moving the two reclining armchairs to flank the sofa, which I’m claiming for however long I need it. Right now I’m lying stretched out on my stomach, thinking of what Nico and I have discussed.
Eschewing a chair, J.T. chooses instead to sit on the floor near my head. He presses a kiss against my hair and wordlessly pets it, gathering his courage. “How are you?” he asks at last.
“Sore,” I tell him. “But I’ll live. How ‘bout you?”
“I’ll live.” Then, “Fuck, Grace.” He looks at Nico. “I thought I had a handle on it. It’s only happened one other time. She—” He stops, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I’ve done counseling. I’m thinking I may need to go back. It can’t happen again. Whatever it takes, I’ll make sure that it doesn’t.”
“Counseling is good, brother.” Nico sits down with him and puts a hand on his knee, silently pledging his support. “Grace and I have been talking about what we can do for now. These are suggestions, J.T. It’s for the three of us to figure out what works. We’re all in this together.”
J.T. exhales a shaky breath. He’s still holding so much fear, it hurts my heart.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “We’re okay. But to just stop—that’s going to hurt, too. We were thinking... if there’s just two of us, to keep things vanilla. No kink, at least for now. When there are three of us, do light bondage on one of us at a time. We use the paddle or the deerskin flogger, but no more than twenty strokes each. No limit on external vibrators. Mutual consent on dildos, gags, plugs, and clamps.”
“Safewords still stand,” Nico tells him. “We’ll give you head on demand and anal with prep.”
“Do those limits make sense to you?” I ask him. More importantly, “Is this something you can live with for a while?”
The look on his face is like a ray of sunshine after a violent storm. When he speaks, I hear sweet relief in his voice.
“Baby girl,” he says, “you have no idea.”
I pull his hand away from my hair and kiss the back of it. “Sure I do. I’m psychic or something, remember?”
That earns me a smile. “You are something, all right.”
Epilogue
The rules lasted all of four weeks. Just that fast, just that quickly, things fell into place.
J.T. found the help that he needs. He is seeing a counselor who works with veterans, and he’s joined an equine therapy program that uses horses for healing. He finds added measures of peace in Nico’s music, in the waters of the lake, and in the joining of our bodies, especially when it’s the three of us together. It took some time, but he’s able to spend the entire night in bed with us, sometimes holding Nico, sometimes holding me.
J.T. has also switched gears in his business. After hiring someone to take his place at the Newton gym, he sold his condo there and now works exclusively in Franklin, forty-five minutes from Posey and the two-bedroom lakeside home that we share.
The guys don’t know it yet, but we’re going to need an addition, a private playroom off the master suite so the guest room can be redecorated. No birth control is one hundred percent. A not-quite-immaculate conception shouldn’t surprise me, really, not when my bathtub drains backward.
The thought of a baby makes me finger the silver necklace around my throat, proof of the fathers’ love. My green leather play collar is beautiful, but the formal collar from J.T. and Nico features the traditional Claddagh design: two hands holding a heart between them. I’m not ashamed to let people know that those hands belong to not one but two beautiful, incredible men. The proof is engraved on the back: my past, present, and future expressed in a single word worn against my skin.
OURS.
We’ll never have a traditional relationship. Instead, we’ll have an extraordinary one. Our children will have three parents, but that’s two more than a lot of kids have. In our home, there will always be love enough to go around. We will always be there for each other, as friends. As lovers. As maybe more is under serious consideration, now that a baby’s getting added to the mix.
The night they gave me their Claddagh collar, tied me up, and fucked me ten ways to Sunday, J.T. broached the subject of marriage. He wants to take care of me. Of us. He’s made it clear to the three sets of parents that we’re a package deal. If we’ve disappointed them, that’s their problem, not ours.
My first lesson? Care less about what others think and focus on what we need, which is something else.
Something different.
Something more.
My friend Anna is jealous as hell. Well, miserable with envy, anyway. Like me, she wants to heal the world, only she does it with music. She used to do it with sex, too, but after her mom’s cancer scare, she’s trying to keep the peace with her parents. Once, I was the virgin doing without and she was beating men off with a stick. Now she’s doing herself, and I’m the vanilla crème center of a scrumptious interracial threesome.
Just seeing me reminds her of what she’s missing. Her maudlin ass is threatening to ruin our weekly lunch date at Wink’s. I finally have to tell her, either get a grip or stuff it.
A slap on my shoulder from an unseen hand stops me from saying more. I’m not allowed to tell her what I see. She is going to meet her match. She will find true love. I only hope she’s ready for it, because they’re coming.
They’re coming.
Oh, fuck.
They’re here….
Author’s Biography
Nia Farrell is the author of one of The 50 Best Indie Books of 2016, a 2016 Golden Flogger Finalist, and a founding member of the Wicked Pens. A multi-genre writer published in nonfiction, poetry, music, articles, and children’s books, with one document
ary screenplay under her literary belt, she’s an old soul and a period reenactor who’s been into corsets for centuries, although she wears them more to Civil War events these days.
Nia has been involved in the metaphysical community for over twenty-five years. She is a Reiki Master and crystal healer whose work encompasses this and other lifetimes. In her book Something More, BDSM and submission are tools for healing post-rape PTSD, earning the first of four Golden Flogger nominations for Best BDSM Book of the Year. She was nominated for Favorite MC Author, The Best of the Best 2017.
Her debut books from The Three Graces series, Something Else, Something Different, and Something More, are kink with a paranormal twist. Soul mates, reincarnation, karmic fallout, shamanism, and psychic abilities come into play. Personal experience and extensive research go into crafting her characters, but it’s her sense of whimsy that has made fictional Posey, Minnesota, the ménage capital of the United States, with a Monty-Python-inspired diner that’s central to the plot lines.
Nia was fortunate enough to meet her soul mate early on. She married her high school sweetheart, raised two children, and began writing novels at her husband’s suggestion. She has been published in erotic romance since 2015.
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