Jonathan crouched on the balls of his feet, peering over Kit’s shoulder. He touched the cut hesitantly, frowning when his fingers were quickly covered with blood. The gash wasn’t deep, but it was several inches long. “We’d better get a bandage on it quick.” He frowned. “Devon, can you grab the first aid kit from the—Devon?”
Devon hadn’t moved since Kit’s first pained shout, Jonathan realized. He’d pulled his legs up to his chest and sat leaning on one elbow, staring blindly at Kit, a cold sheen of sweat breaking out on his brow. “Devon?” Jonathan repeated, his attention torn between his two lovers.
Kit grabbed his discarded T-shirt and wrapped it tightly around his arm, coming up on his knees to peer into Devon’s face. “Devon?” he echoed, starting to reach out before realizing his hand was stained with blood.
Squeezing Kit’s shoulder reassuringly, Jonathan raised his other hand slowly to Devon’s cheek. “Devon?” he called again, his voice as gentle as his touch. “Babe, what is it?”
The tenderness of Jonathan’s presence broke Devon free of the vision that had overwhelmed him at the sight of Kit’s blood. He shuddered and rubbed his hand over his face, forcing himself from memories back to the present—a present where he had once again harmed his lover. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Kit.” Devon groaned as Kit clutched his bloodstained shirt around his arm. “What the fuck am I doing to you? I can’t do this anymore,” he growled, pushing to his feet. “I won’t do this again! Not to you!” He turned blindly toward the door, his only thought to get away before he could hurt either of them any further.
“Devon!” Kit shouted, jumping up after him, completely ignoring his injured arm. Yeah, it hurt, but losing Devon would hurt a whole lot more. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jonathan rose and stood in front of Devon, blocking his path. “You’re not running away from us, Devon,” he insisted, taking him by the arm and guiding him back to the sofa. “You didn’t hurt Kit—it was an accident. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine for not moving Excalibur when the two of you started to play.” He cupped Devon’s face, forcing him to meet his concerned gaze. “I’m going to take Kit into the bathroom and clean him up. Promise me you won’t try to leave. We need to talk about this.”
Devon ran his hand through his hair, still shaken from the emotional ferocity of the memories. “I’ll stay,” he muttered wearily. “I just—bollocks! I don’t want…. I’ll stay.”
It was the best Jonathan could do for now. He dropped a kiss on the top of Devon’s head, then turned and followed Kit into the bathroom.
Kit let Jonathan tend to his arm, but his thoughts remained focused on Devon’s outburst. “What’s going on with Devon?” he asked, needing some reassurance that everything would be all right. “Is it still…?” He didn’t want to evoke the specter that had haunted them the past few days. He had thought, had hoped, they had banished that particular ghost.
“I think this bastard Robert has a lot more to answer for than we suspected,” Jonathan said tightly. Setting his jaw, he unwrapped the bloody cloth from Kit’s arm with gentle hands, relieved to see the cut was not as bad as he’d originally feared. “I think we can get by without stitches.” He wiped away the blood that had already started to dry with a clean washcloth. “I don’t know what’s going on in Devon’s head right now, but it seemed like seeing your blood is what set him off, and I’m willing to bet that prick had something to do with it.” Jonathan fit a large bandage over Kit’s cut, trying to get his anger under control before they returned to the parlor. He couldn’t let Devon think his anger was directed toward him.
“I want to know who he is,” Kit decided as Jonathan worked on his arm, his own anger bubbling beneath the surface, quelled only because having them all angry and upset could only end in catastrophe. “And I want him the hell away from Devon.”
“Well, we already know Devon met him on one of his films.” Jonathan smoothed the adhesive ends of the bandage into place. “Let’s see what else Devon will tell us now, and then maybe I can do some checking. Especially since he’s supposed to show up on set.”
Kit nodded. “The more we know, the better we’ll be able to deal with whatever else comes up. One way or another, though, I want the bastard kept away. He’s hurt Devon too much already.” He looked at his arm in the mirror, seeing no remaining trace of blood. “Am I all done?”
Jonathan wrapped his arms around Kit and turned him until they were facing each other, lowering his head to take his mouth in a slow, warm kiss. “I want to protect him as much as you do,” Jonathan murmured. “We’ll find a way to deal with this together.”
Kit tightened his arms around Jonathan’s waist, leaning into the kiss, drawing strength from it, strength he would need to face whatever demons haunted Devon. “Together,” he agreed when their lips separated.
Devon looked up as Kit and Jonathan walked back into the parlor, his expression drawn with worry and guilt. “How bad is it?” he asked, his gaze flickering between the two. “Do we need to take him to hospital?”
“I’m fine,” Kit insisted, keeping his tone deliberately light. “It was just a little scratch. See, Jonathan bandaged it up all nice and neat. Give me a day or two and you won’t even know it happened.”
“It shouldn’t have happened at all,” Devon insisted. “I had no business wrestling with you like that. I’m bigger than you, stronger—I should have known you’d wind up hurt.”
“That’s not the way I remember what was happening,” Kit said. “Until I rolled into Jonathan’s sword like an idiot, I thought I was doing a fine job of holding my own. Yes, you’re bigger, but that doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to harm me. I know you’d never deliberately hurt me that way.”
Devon flushed at Kit’s words, his head dropping in shame. “But I did,” he muttered thickly, his hands clenching into fists on his thighs. “I always do.”
Jonathan moved next to Devon on the sofa as Kit sat on his opposite side, the two of them surrounding him with the warmth of their presence. “Something happened, didn’t it, Devon?” Jonathan asked gently. “Something else that this reminded you of?”
Kit wrapped his arms around Devon from one side, while Jonathan’s arms encircled him from the other, and waited for Devon’s answer.
Taking a deep breath, Devon tried to relax, but he couldn’t let go, not when every time he closed his eyes he saw that long-ago night—only this time the face of the young man beneath him was Kit’s. As much as he wanted to forget the ugly incident, his reaction tonight proved that was impossible. Whatever happened as a result, his lovers deserved to know the truth.
“What I told you before,” Devon started in a voice so low Jonathan could barely hear him. He cleared his throat and started again. “This is worse—I don’t know if I can…. It’s more than just admitting how weak I was. He made me—” Devon hesitated, shaking his head in denial. “No, I can’t blame him. I was the one who—” He broke off again in frustration, trying to stand. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this crap. I need to go.”
Kit’s arms tightened, keeping Devon in place. “You need to stop running from this,” he corrected firmly. He had never been hurt the way Devon had been, but he knew what the weight of emotional baggage could do to a man. The only way to be free of the past was to face it and deal with it. “It will haunt you until you do. As for dealing with this crap, as you call it, I think we’re the ones with the right to decide when it’s too much. I don’t recall complaining. Are you complaining, Jonathan?”
“Only because Devon keeps trying to leave.” Jonathan placed a hand on Devon’s thigh to keep him from standing. “There’s nothing you can tell us that’s going to change the way we feel about you, Devon. What happened years ago can’t touch what we have now.” He caught Devon’s chin in his other hand, forcing him to meet his gaze. “Unless you let it.”
Devon nodded slowly, some of the tension easing from his rigid muscles. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve the u
nconditional support of the two men who sat at his side, but he wouldn’t let Robert—or even Robert’s memory—drive them away.
When Devon relaxed, Kit leaned in and nipped lightly at his earlobe. “Can you tell us now?” he asked softly. He didn’t want to pressure, but he also didn’t want this to fester and lead to nightmares like the last time Devon tried to “protect” them from his past.
“I’ll try,” Devon agreed, his gaze falling. He would tell them—they had the right to know what he’d done—but he couldn’t look in their eyes and admit it. “We’d been together for a while, and he—Robert—he said that I’d done so well with everything he asked, I was ready for the next step. That was when he brought in Blaine. He—they’d been together before, he said, and Blaine would be perfect for me to learn on—to learn to be a Dom.”
“You’re a wonderful Dom,” Kit protested, remembering their time together at the beach house and how amazing Devon had made him feel. He had no idea what was on Devon’s mind, but he didn’t see how it could be as awful as Devon seemed to think.
Something teased at the edge of Jonathan’s memory, but the abject tone in Devon’s voice made him push aside any consideration but reassuring their lover. “He wanted you to learn to be a Dom? Why?”
“In some twisted way, I think it made him feel even more powerful,” Devon admitted. “Like he wasn’t pulling only the sub’s strings, but mine too.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily. “I couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t so bloody obvious Blaine wanted it. We were both damn pathetic, looking back. We’d have done anything, taken anything, just to hear a word of praise from him.”
Kit knew how that felt. Though he had no problem escaping that headspace most of the time, he remembered craving Devon’s approval on the porch of their beach house. He would have done just about anything that afternoon too. “What did he make you do?”
Jonathan rubbed his free hand gently down Devon’s back, unwilling to interrupt but wordlessly encouraging him to go on.
“Oh, he made sure to teach me everything,” Devon said scornfully. “Everything he’d ever done to me, he taught me to do to my ‘boy.’ And God help me, I liked it—I liked hearing him tell me I’d done well, liked making my sub beg for what he wanted, bloody loved watching him get off when I finally gave him what he needed.”
And that’s the difference between you, Jonathan thought. Devon didn’t get his enjoyment from power, from control—he wasn’t describing what he took from his sub, but what he’d given to his partner. “So you both wanted it,” Jonathan prompted when Devon fell silent again. “What happened to change that?”
“One night, he wanted me to shave Blaine,” Devon said, closing his eyes as the scene replayed behind his lids. “I’d cuffed him to the bed so he couldn’t move, and Robert had this bloody straight razor.” Even now, Devon felt a throb of arousal at the thought of shaving Jonathan or Kit that way. “The thing was so damn sharp, I was going slow to be sure I didn’t slip—and Robert laughed, told me that Blaine would like it if I cut him.” Devon swallowed against the gorge that rose in his throat at the memory. “He told me to cut him, and I did—just a little nick, really. I’d gotten worse myself with a safety razor. And he told me—he told me to do it again. And again.”
Kit gulped, both at the thought of being cut that way and at the understanding of how the injury on his arm must have affected Devon. “You didn’t mean to cut me,” Kit reminded him firmly, trying to hide the tremble still dancing along his nerves. “And you weren’t doing anything Blaine didn’t want, right? I mean, Robert wasn’t lying to you, was he?” He couldn’t imagine wanting to be cut, but that didn’t mean someone else might not feel that way.
Devon shook his head, too ashamed to look up. “After the first time, I could tell Blaine was frightened, and the longer it went on, the worse he got. He kept looking from Robert, back to me, and I thought—I hoped—but he wouldn’t use his safeword, even though by then I could tell he was terrified.” He dropped his head into his hands, burying them in his hair. “When I realized he wasn’t going to stop me, I felt sick. I couldn’t do it anymore, no matter what Robert said. I started to back away, and he—he told me I was weak, that I needed to make my sub want it, to take control. He—he hit me, hit my arm, and the razor—it cut Blaine, deep, and there was so fuckin’ much blood—”
Devon was all but talking to himself, Jonathan realized, lost in a memory only he could see. Lifting Devon’s head gently, he combed the tangled hair back with his fingers. “It was an accident, Devon,” he repeated, his voice quiet but insistent. “Just like with Kit. You didn’t mean to hurt him that way.”
“If I didn’t mean to hurt him, I should have stopped as soon as I knew he was frightened, and I didn’t. I didn’t!” Devon’s voice rose as he forced his way to his feet. “I knew he was fuckin’ terrified, and I kept on anyway, so Robert wouldn’t think I was fuckin’ weak! What does that make me? How could you ever trust me now that you know?”
“Where is Robert now?” Kit rose to his feet as well and approached Devon slowly. “Is he still standing behind you, goading you on? He wasn’t there when you claimed us at the beach. We were completely yours that weekend. You could have asked us to do just about anything, and we would probably have done it, just like you’re saying you did for Robert. Think about what you asked, Devon. Think about what you did to us. You’re the same man now that you were that weekend. And the fact that you still feel guilty about something that happened years ago is just more proof that you are not Robert.” He drove his last words home hard, trying to break through Devon’s self-imposed isolation.
Jonathan stood and held Devon by the shoulders, trying to convey all his love and trust through his touch. “Kit’s right, Devon. The fact that it’s still eating at you is proof that Robert didn’t win—not then, and not now. Someday I’m going to show you just how much I trust you,” he promised, his voice heavy with arousal at the thought. “But right now, I just want you to let us love you.”
“Come upstairs with us,” Kit seconded. “Let us show you how much we want you.” How much we’ll always want you.
Jonathan lowered his head to kiss the exposed skin of Devon’s chest. “Want you, Devon,” he urged, rubbing his stubbled cheek over the coating of golden hair. “Want to show you… how much….” He closed his lips around a peaked nipple, moaning at the taste of Devon’s skin.
“You can bloody well wait until we get upstairs where we can get naked and be comfortable,” Kit scolded, slapping lightly at Jonathan’s hands. “Come on, Devon. The king can join us when he’s got himself under control again.”
The combination of Kit’s teasing words and Jonathan’s passionate kiss returned Devon’s focus firmly to the here and now. “Getting naked sounds good to me,” he admitted, grateful beyond words that his confession had not driven them away.
“Let’s get upstairs, then.” Jonathan grinned, giddy with relief that they’d managed to allay Devon’s self-doubts. He jumped to his feet and bounded up the steps before either of the others could react, leaving a trail of clothes along the way.
Kit chuckled at Jonathan’s enthusiasm. Not that he wasn’t feeling the same way. It just amused him. “Shall we join him?” he asked, offering his hand to Devon.
Devon enclosed Kit’s hand in his, reaching the other to hover over Kit’s bandaged arm without touching it. “I’m sorry, Kit,” he repeated quietly. “I never meant—”
Kit caught Devon’s free hand and lifted it to his chest before leaning forward to kiss him tenderly. “I know. You wouldn’t hurt me deliberately. Accidents happen. Now can we go upstairs and shag the king blind?” He was not trying to dismiss Devon’s feelings, but they’d all had enough drama for the day. It was time to lighten the mood.
An enthusiastic “Fuck, yeah!” from upstairs shattered the last of Devon’s awkwardness. Whether he deserved it or not, these two amazing men wanted him, and he was going to show them exactly what they meant to him in return. Giving a f
inal squeeze to Kit’s hand, he headed up the stairs two at a time, bursting into the bedroom to find Jonathan already naked on the bed.
“About time the both of you got here,” Jonathan complained, stroking a hand over his already impressive erection. “It’s a good thing I don’t get jealous, or I’d think you two were starting without me again.”
Laughing, Kit unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them down his legs. “If anyone started without the others, it was you,” he pointed out archly. Stepping up behind Devon, he started working on the fastenings on his lover’s trousers.
Devon kicked off his clothes impatiently and nudged Kit onto the bed, where he landed across Jonathan’s legs. Kneeling beside him, Devon lowered his head for a gentle kiss, letting his hands wander over the smooth torso as his lips wordlessly offered his contrition.
“Oof!” Kit gasped as Jonathan’s knees dug into his back. He pushed on Devon’s shoulders, not to break the kiss, but to roll him over so he could lie more comfortably. When Devon lay on his back, Kit rose up on his knees, taking control, determined to show Devon that his revelations hadn’t changed anything. He kissed his way down Devon’s neck and chest, his destination clear even if he meant to take his time getting there.
Kit’s lips tempted Devon to lie back and give up control, but he still needed to prove his repentance. Shifting to his side, he trailed gentle kisses across Kit’s collarbone and down the shoulder of the injured arm, detouring to tease a honeyed nipple before moving lower. Shifting his legs, he aligned their bodies so that each of them could touch and kiss the other freely.
The sight of Kit and Devon pleasuring each other started a low heat building in Jonathan’s belly, growing more intense as their attentions grew more intimate. When Devon shifted again to take Kit into his mouth, Jonathan couldn’t resist molding himself against Devon’s strong, graceful back, his arousal prodding the taut buttocks as he traced lips and teeth over Devon’s shoulders.
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