Idiot. I’m the idiot, not them.
He realized he had it just as bad for her, if not worse, than Mark and Josh.
He led her to the living room and opted to stand while he got her settled on the sofa. “Can we get you anything to drink?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Mark and Josh stared at him, apparently dumbfounded into silence.
Great. “So. What did you want to know?” he asked when it was apparent neither of his brothers were going to speak.
She drew in a deep breath. “Loren was telling me some stuff. About why she does it. About it giving her a mental vacation.”
He nodded. “That’s what it’s like for some people, yes.”
Her sweet brown gaze settled on his for just a moment before skipping away to his brothers, then back to the floor. She held her purse tucked in her lap, both hands around it, practically hugging it against her. “What’s it like for you guys? Do you enjoy hurting women?”
“No!” the three of them responded in unison.
Mark and Josh looked at him before ceding the floor again. “The impact play is fun,” Ted explained, “and bondage, but only if the person we’re playing with wants that. We actually had a partner who was into far heavier play than we were comfortable with.”
She met his gaze again. “You shared her?”
Now he felt uncomfortable. While poly and other forms of nonmonogamy were common among the people they socialized with in the BDSM lifestyle, it wasn’t something they usually discussed outside that circle of friends. “Yes.”
“Like those other friends of yours? Tilly and her guys?”
“Sort of,” he said. “They’re a little different, but same principle.”
“So what do you like to do with a woman?” she asked.
Wow, the one time he wished he could melt out of the spotlight, and he couldn’t pay his brothers to take over for him. He finally stepped a little closer. “You want me to be direct about it, or do you want me to sugar-coat it?”
“Direct.”
His heart thumped a little in his chest. It’d been on the tip of his tongue to reply with, “Good girl,” but he knew at this point it might be received the wrong way.
“We like to be in charge,” he said. “Yes, we’ve shared women before. We’ve each been divorced. We separately realized that we needed more than a vanilla relationship. We didn’t set out to be poly, but it just happened that way.”
“In charge how?”
He sensed the minefield and treaded lightly. “In the bedroom. In the relationship part of it. Not overbearing,” he quickly added when he sensed her tensing. “Not domineering, but with input and decision-making. But…” He tried to think of the best way to phrase it. “In charge, taking care of things, the safe lighthouse always there for you to come home to.”
He knew that was taking a big risk, phrasing it like that, but decided if she was asking, maybe she had more on her mind than he’d guessed. “Just because others do things their way doesn’t mean we do it the same way. A little over-the-knee spanking, some bondage, forced orgasm play, a little protocol.”
He took another step closer, now standing in front of her, forcing her to look up to meet his gaze. He dropped his voice and prayed his cock didn’t harden and tent his shorts right there.
“I enjoy knowing that at the end of the day, I can come home and let go of everything else and focus on one thing, and that I am, for a little while, the center of your world and your entire focus. That I can provide that safe, calm, dependable anchor when the rest of the world threatens to carry you away with its craziness.”
Mark stepped forward, his voice sounding lower than usual, nearly choked with emotion. “That you can curl up with your head in my lap while I stroke your hair and tell you what a good girl you are.”
Josh added his two cents. “That you can tell me what’s wrong, and if you need me to fix it for you, I’ll do my damnedest or die trying. That you never have to face anything alone ever again.”
Ted glanced at his brothers, realizing they were, all three of them, idiots in love with this woman whom they barely knew. A woman who didn’t even live here and who would likely break their hearts when she returned home.
“That we can take you to bed,” he said, “and even if there’s stuff going on in your life that is totally out of our control to fix for you, that at the very least we can take your mind off it and make you forget about it while you’re with us.”
Ted stepped around the coffee table and sat at an angle next to her on the couch, his arm draped across the back of the sofa, but not touching her…yet. “Someone we can take care of. Spoil rotten. But what we ask in return is willing submission. We can’t and won’t take it. You have to want to give it. We’ll never force you to do something, but there might be plenty of times you find yourself faced with making the choice to submit or refuse.”
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. “Like what?” she asked.
Taking another risk, he reached out with his other arm and tucked stray strands of her hair behind her ears. “My ideal is a relationship where I’m in control. I’ll ask you to do what I say, when I say it. Not in terms of work or things like that.” He waited until her gaze settled and focused on him. “I might make a rule that you don’t wear panties at home without permission. And that if you break that rule, you get a spanking. Or I might make a rule that if you aren’t at work, your cell phone is always on you. And if you don’t answer a call, or at least text me back, you might get a spanking.”
Mark chimed in. “Or a rule that if you ask me to make a decision for you, you will abide by that decision even if you decide you don’t like it. Whether it’s what to order at a restaurant, what movie to see, or how to handle a jerk hitting on you on Facebook.”
“Like controlling who I can be friends with?” He heard the edgy tone in her voice, but Josh jumped in with a response before Ted could.
“No, not exactly. Not unless that person was dangerous for some reason. Or that person upset you on a regular basis and you let them walk all over you. We would never cut you off from your friends or you mom. But we would hope that you would have a level of trust in us that, if we saw a situation develop that was unhealthy, you would completely confide in us and allow us to make a decision on what to do about it.”
“So…all three of you were in a relationship with the same woman?”
“The longest poly group we had was more play and sex than a real relationship,” Ted said. “If you told us all you wanted for right now was to just be play partners, we’d be okay with that. Or if you’d like to see what might happen, we could agree to be exclusive for now.”
He cupped her cheek with his hand and gently tipped her face up. “If you just wanted to let go for tonight and see what might happen without any thoughts about tomorrow, see if you’d even be okay with this, we can do that, too.”
He wasn’t expecting it when she nodded.
He glanced up at Mark and Josh, who both nodded.
Returning his attention to her, he decided to push more.
She wants this, she’ll need to be ready for it.
He dropped into his “Dom” tone. “What do you want, Essline?” he asked. “You need to say it.”
He caught the hitch in her breath and could barely hear her soft whisper. “I don’t want to think tonight. I don’t want to be in charge tonight.”
Aaaaand there goes my cock.
He forced himself not to think about the painful erection straining against the front of his nylon shorts. “What are your hard limits?” When confusion furrowed her brow, he added, “Sex, yes or no?”
She nodded.
“You have to ask for it.”
“I’d…like to see what it’s like.”
He desperately hoped this wasn’t just a curiosity for her. A chance to sow wild oats and then return to Spokane and never speak to them again. “I would like to feel what it’s like to put you over my l
ap, naked, and spank you with my bare hand while you’re sucking one of their cocks,” he said. “Maybe even use a paddle on that sweet ass of yours, until it’s red and sore, before I slide my cock up your ass. Would you like that?”
That was pushing it, and he knew it, but if she wanted to play this game she needed to play by their rules. More importantly, she needed to know those rules and agree to them before they could play.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, what?”
She swallowed again. “Yes, Sir.”
He leaned in closer, so close he could feel her breath against his lips. “Then ask for it. Tell us what you want.”
“I…I’m not into pain but I’d like to try to see if I can get to subspace like Loren talked about. Like…like in the books. I’ve read a lot of books. I didn’t realize people did it in real life though.”
Oh…shit.
He desperately hoped she wasn’t one of those, who just wanted to play for a little while to scratch an itch because of a novel she’d read. Before he could ask more, she continued.
“I’m willing to try it but only as long as I know if I ask you to stop that you will. If it gets to be too much.”
“This isn’t a game to us,” he said. “All you need to do is just say red and we’ll stop, I promise. But up to and until you do, we won’t stop. We won’t give you more than you can take, though. We want it to be fun for you.”
He watched her look at Mark, and then Josh, before she returned her focus to him. “You’re all okay with sharing someone?”
“Sweetheart,” Ted said, “it makes it that much hotter for us. Women have the advantage of multiple orgasms. We can tag team you and keep you coming all night and share the work. You sure you can handle all three of us?”
Chapter Seventeen
Ted’s low tone sounded like a velvety purr. If that wasn’t enough to turn her insides to melted butter, the playful smile that curled his lips would have finished her off.
“Just think,” he continued. “Tied up, helpless, and forced to orgasm all night long. Three cocks filling you, three sets of hands, three mouths. Keeping you so busy that the only thing you can think about is how good it feels.”
Hell, her clit was already throbbing, her pussy wet.
Mark spoke up. “A cock in your pussy, one in your ass, and one in your mouth.” When she glanced his way, he wore the same sinfully seductive smile his eldest brother wore.
Josh added, “You know, I still have that Hitachi in my toy bag.” His grin looked downright evil.
“Oooh,” Ted and Mark said.
“Even better,” Ted continued. “Three cocks filling you, while one of us holds a vibrator against your sweet little clit. You might never want to leave.”
“No strings attached tonight,” Josh said, “except that we’re in charge unless or until you safeword.”
“A chance to see us the way we really are,” Mark added. “If you don’t like us like that, we part as friends and no hard feelings. But if you do like it…” He shrugged.
Ted picked it up. “If you do like it,” he said in that same delicious velvety tone, “then we can do it again. And again. Maybe get you to the point you think about moving back to Florida. Because I promise you, if you give us a chance to be in the driver’s seat, we’ll do everything in our power to show you how good it could be on a permanent basis.”
Ooooh, that sounded tempting. Sooo fucking tempting, he had no idea.
Then again, maybe he did.
Dangling in front of her a chance to have not one, but three hunky guys filling, among other things, her heart and her bed? To be able to, for once, have someone she could lean on instead of shouldering the weight of the universe on her shoulders?
A chance to let someone else, someone she could trust, be in control for a change?
“We have a lot of friends,” Ted said. “A lot of great people. It’s like an extended family. Ross and Loren. Tilly, Landry, and Cris. Tony and Shayla. Bill and Gabe. And others. You’ve met a lot of them. Look at how Ross and Loren jumped into action to help your mom when they barely knew her and didn’t know you at all. That’s how they all are. Other than your friend Amy, and her family, who do you have keeping you in Spokane? Your mom is here. You could have a ready-made family of your own with us and our friends. Where if you have a problem, you could pick up a phone and call any of them and they’d be there for you in a heartbeat.”
The sudden prickle of tears in her eyes surprised her. She blinked them away. “Can we just see how tonight goes?” she asked, his comments hitting far too close to home for her liking. She didn’t want to think, and pondering the truth of his proposal would engage her brain in an emotionally painful way.
“Then tell us what you want,” Ted quietly insisted.
“I want to be submissive to you three tonight.”
Ted leaned in and kissed her, the hand cupping her chin gently but firmly holding her in place while his other hand slipped around the nape of her neck and gripped her there as well. He didn’t have to force her lips apart. As soon as she felt the flick of his tongue against the seam of her lips, they parted for him.
He lifted his mouth from hers. “Such a good girl,” he whispered before kissing her again, this time with more force, in charge and totally possessive.
With that simple sentence, it felt like he’d stuck a spatula in the middle of her melted-butter soul and gave it a quick stir.
She was aware of Josh and Mark closing in, one of them sitting on her other side on the couch and one of them now standing in front of her, but with her eyes closed she lost track of who was who. One of them took her purse from her lap and she heard him set it on the coffee table.
Then there were another set of lips caressing the side of her neck, and a hand slipping through and tangling in her hair.
“Just let go,” Josh said. “We’ll catch you. We promise.”
Ted ended their kiss again and touched his forehead against hers. “Let us catch you. Just let us take care of you.”
“I don’t know how,” she admitted, feeling the tears struggling to break through again. “I don’t know how to let go.”
Ted gently stroked her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. “Then let us teach you how to let go. Just give us a chance to show you how good it could be, how freeing it can feel.”
She wanted to. Daaaammnn, did she ever want to. Not just for the sexytime, either. Not just for the fun. She wanted to see what it was like, just once, to let go and know someone else could take control and make the world go away.
It was a luxury she’d never had, not since she was a child.
She nodded. “Okay.”
He smiled, rubbing his nose against hers. “Okay?”
She thought about it. “Yes, Sir.”
“Good girl.”
She whimpered.
* * * *
Mark didn’t know when he’d slipped from wanting to make her theirs, to desperately hoping she’d let them make her theirs, but it felt right. Better than right, it felt perfect. One woman who could understand and complete them. One woman they could spend their private time with, who could accept them fully as they were, the way they were, in the same way they wanted and accepted her.
It was a little selfish on his part, but he wanted to blow her mind in bed, to get her to the point that she didn’t want to leave them, wouldn’t leave them, wouldn’t disappear to Spokane to drift away from them.
Yes, she had a shit-ton of emotional baggage. Who better to understand, love, and help her heal than them? They understood. They got it. They didn’t have hoarders for parents, but they’d worked with enough of them to know the problems. To know how deeply the condition hurt their families.
They were lucky their own parents were alive, but the fact that she had unresolved issues with her own father was something they could and would help her with, if she’d let them in.
She turned her head to look at him. “Are you really okay with this?” she ask
ed.
He smiled and kissed her. “Really. I’d kill any other guy who tried to lay a hand on you, but these are my brothers. I’d never worry about you if I wasn’t with you if I know one of them is around.”
“Yes,” Ted and Josh echoed.
“See?” He kissed her again, savoring it. “I know this is new to you. But we also know this can work. We have friends who make this work. I’m not saying it’s perfect or that there won’t be hiccups, but with all of us there behind you, we’ll be able to hold you up, help you find your way, and never abandon you. Sometimes, we’ll each have alone time with you.”
He chuckled. “And sometimes, we’ll have you in bed between us, our hands all over you, our cocks inside you, and blow your mind so hard that you’ll never want to be anywhere but here.”
“You don’t even know me,” she said. “Not really. How can you be so sure?”
“Because I feel it. I know what didn’t work, and what didn’t feel right. This feels right, feels good. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to prove to you how good it could be if you just let it happen and don’t keep making excuses for why it couldn’t work.”
Big brother Ted suddenly applied the brakes. “Uh, guys, condoms?”
Mark silently swore, but Josh jumped up. “I think I still have some. Hold on.” He ran down to his bedroom and returned a moment later, triumph on his face and Trojans in his hand. “Ta-da!”
Essie giggled, the sweet sound sending the good kind of shivers through Mark’s soul.
Hers. Whether she knew it or not, whether she still wanted him or not tomorrow, he knew his heart irretrievably belonged to her.
* * * *
Essie realized she was really about to go through with this.
Really.
As every logical reason as to why this was a horribly irresponsible and dumbass move tried to scream its way through her mind, she shoved those thoughts away and did her best to ignore them.
Maybe this would be okay.
Maybe it would lead to something good.
A Clean Sweep Page 17
