by Mari Carr
Her family was large and outspoken. As such, it was rare for her to be able to express her thoughts on a subject in more than a sentence or two before someone else burst in with their opinion, advice, or witty commentary.
Hugo talked a bit about his last article, promising to email it to her, and Lancelot had them all in stitches as he shared stories about growing up in Liverpool. As they spoke, she started studying their body language, their mannerisms toward each other. Though Hugo proclaimed they were merely associates, working together to gather research for his book, she couldn’t help but feel there was something more there.
They sometimes looked at one another before speaking, as if checking what—perhaps how—they should answer. They shared meaningful glances that left her curious. At times, they acted like strangers toward each other, while at others, they seemed like close friends.
And those were the physical things. There was more—an energy that passed between them, an energy that made her want to lean in to feel that power and heat.
As they finished dessert, she thought perhaps she’d identified the solution to the puzzle. “Are the two of you lovers?” she asked.
Hugo, who’d been taking a sip of coffee, choked. Lancelot grinned, shaking his head as if her question was preposterous.
“’Course not.”
“But you’re attracted to each other,” she persisted, certain she wasn’t wrong in her assessment.
Hugo put his coffee cup down. “What makes you say that?”
She placed her hand over Hugo’s, then reached across the table to take Lancelot’s as well. “There’s something almost electric pulsing between the two of you. Surely you can feel that.”
Lancelot glanced at Hugo, his brows furrowed. Then Lancelot’s gaze returned to her. “Truth is, Sylvia…I have felt something most of today. But I think you’re misreading where my interest…” His words fell away when Hugo shook his head subtly.
Then Hugo’s hand twisted, his fingers tangling with hers, his brilliant blue gaze intense and focused. “Lancelot,” he said softly. “I don’t think Sylvia—”
“You want me,” she said, not bothering to question it. She’d noticed that as well over the course of the meal. The way both men found subtle, sweet ways to touch her or shift their seats closer.
“Sylvia,” Hugo said. “You were a student in my class. I can assure you I did not show up here today with any ulterior motives. I wanted to take this opportunity to reconnect with someone I remembered fondly. Regardless of what Lancelot says, I—”
“I want you, too.”
Hugo glanced at Lancelot and then back at her.
“Which one of us?” Lancelot asked.
Sylvia smiled, but didn’t answer his question directly. “After I graduated from college, Mrs. Rutherford invited me to spend a weekend with her and her husband in Columbia. He was stationed there for a short time. Mrs. Rutherford believed I had the capacity to understand love and passion in their full complexity, rather than the narrow view defined by contemporary society.”
The men shared a glance. Lancelot frowned. Hugo arched one brow as he leaned toward her. “What did you do on this weekend, to understand the full complexity?” He repeated her phrase carefully.
Sylvia let her smile widen. “My writing then was good, but more romantic than real. It was the poetry of a girl who didn’t know how deep and wide the human soul could be.” Sylvia took a moment, reminding herself not to get caught up in the imagery the words provoked. “She suggested that I learn about relationships in reverse, like Merlin.”
Lancelot blinked, though his shoulders were still tense. “Like…Merlin?”
“In some of the tales, Merlin lives backwards. Born at the wrong end of time.” Hugo glanced at Lancelot and smiled. “You should know that, chevalier mal fait.”
Sylvia smiled. “He is far from ill-made.”
“This is true,” Hugo murmured.
“Get back to the story,” Lancelot grumped.
Sylvia shook out her hair. “I’d always been younger than most of my classmates. As such, I didn’t really date much in school. In fact, I was a virgin when Mrs. Rutherford suggested the weekend.”
Lancelot tensed, his big shoulders seeming to swell under his shirt. A muscle in his jaw clenched and he leaned forward. “What did they do to you?”
There was a darkness in his tone that felt out of character with what she’d learned of him over the course of the past few hours. His demeanor didn’t feel dangerous—at least not to her—but there was a look in his eyes that told her he would be her champion if she needed one.
It was a romantic notion, one her brother Oscar would have rolled his eyes at. However, she preferred her expansive and encompassing rose-colored view of the world and love over his stark black-and-white vision that saw nonfamilial relationships as too subjective, too open to interpretation. Sylvia sometimes missed the bighearted, easy-to-love, and slow-to-anger man Oscar had been before Faith. But the past was the past, and she hoped he’d heal.
Oscar lived in a narrow world of absolutes, preferring the tap tap tap sound of his keyboard to any real conversation.
While Sylvia fell in love too fast—and too frequently for her brother’s liking—Oscar never fell at all. He’d sworn off love, which would have seemed overly dramatic and even silly if she hadn’t seen exactly how broken he’d been.
She’d actually placed a bet once that Oscar would end up with Harmony, the first AI sex robot. She hadn’t won…yet. But she figured it was only a matter of time.
“The Rutherfords didn’t do anything to me,” Sylvia said.
Hugo cleared his throat, drawing Lancelot and Sylvia’s attention to him. The sound was clearly meant as a warning for Lancelot—another clue to the puzzle of these two men.
“How did Mrs. Rutherford suggest you learn about relationships?” Hugo was more circumspect, able to ask questions without emotion coloring his tone, even though his eyes said something different.
“She and her husband took me to their sex club.”
“Bloody hell.” Lancelot half rose from his chair, reaching for his hip like there was some imaginary weapon there.
Hugo lunged across the table and placed his hand on Lancelot’s shoulder, pushing the man back down into his chair.
“You were a virgin,” Lancelot said, his voice quieter, though still deadly. “They had no business taking you to a place like that.”
Sylvia reached out to rest her hand on top of Lancelot’s. “I only attended as a spectator, Lancelot. No one touched me. And it was quite fascinating, eye-opening. When you’re young, even if you have parents who are open-minded, you think of love as a string—it goes from one point to the next. A date to a relationship, a relationship to sex, sex to marriage. What Alicia did was let me see things I’d never considered, not only in terms of sex, but the direct connection between people regardless of gender. Power and submission, trust and fear, and even the fine line between love and hate. I saw the binary, the contrast, and then I saw all the shadows that occupy the space between. I saw people change, flowing in and out of constructs I had assumed were fixed in our DNA.
“That night, I learned sexuality is fluid, that a person can crave control in one relationship, but submit in another. I saw things that could objectively be called cruel done with care and attention that made them acts of love. I left the club that night and wrote for the next twenty-four hours straight. Half the poems in my first novel were written right after that experience.”
“Were Ali—Mrs. Rutherford and her husband participants?” Hugo asked.
Sylvia nodded, as she recalled watching the couple that night. “Mrs. Rutherford had bound her husband’s hands together above his head. At first, I tried to look away. It had felt wrong to stare at my teacher’s naked husband.”
Lancelot’s shoulders were stiff and his mouth a flat line.
“What happened then?” Hugo asked.
Sylvia continued to tell them about everything she’
d seen that night. How Mrs. Rutherford had recognized her hesitance and in that calm, patient way she had, she found a way to explain how it made her feel to see her husband naked, bound, completely at her disposal. She spoke of feminism and power. She lifted her whip to bring it down on her husband’s back, his bare ass, his strong thighs, demonstrating exactly what she meant through her actions, her rough whipping, her harsh demands.
As she spoke, Lancelot’s eyebrows crept up his forehead, while Hugo looked a bit ashen, eventually turning to look out at the water.
Then Sylvia explained how Mrs. Rutherford described the beauty of desire and submission and mercy. “As she told me what those words meant to her, she gently stroked her fingers and lips over her husband’s skin, paying closest attention to the marks left behind by the lash.”
“What about Mr. Rutherford?” Hugo asked stiffly.
“Mr. Rutherford remained silent throughout the entire scene, yet I felt he’d spoken to me as much as my teacher, with his pleading, hungry eyes, his quiet gasps of pain, his moans of pleasure, the soft clatter of the chains as his arms and body trembled. And then most of all when it was his wife’s name—Alicia—on his lips as he came. When it was over, Mrs. Rutherford pulled me close and whispered, ‘Poetry without words.’”
And that was only one of the scenes she’d seen that night. All of them had been beautiful in their own way, and seeing them had shaped her. It made her more accepting, more perceptive of the potential within each person for deep, complex passions.
“Watching them,” she admitted softly, after she finished describing all she had observed that night, “was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
“Why did you tell us this story?” Lancelot asked, his expression vacillating between curious and scowling. Hugo had turned away from the water, his gaze intense.
“Before that weekend, I’d viewed sex only as an extension of love. But it’s so much more than that. Mrs. Rutherford and I have had several conversations about this since then. She’s encouraged me to explore my sexuality, to view my sexual journey as an opportunity to discover all these hidden facets within myself. To explore those shadowy places that fall outside societal norms of desire.”
Sylvia began flipping through her sketch pad, looking for a certain page, even though she had every line drawn on it memorized.
When she found it, she turned it toward them. In the center was a sketch she’d drawn of herself, naked, her arms stretched upwards, her legs parted.
Sylvia laughed softly as both men’s eyes widened. “It’s just a rough sketch, showing things I’ve done as well as things I long to do.”
“It’s…” Hugo looked up at her. “You’re beautiful.”
Around her body were icons that represented her experiences as well as her desires. She pointed to the rope dangling from one wrist. “Bondage.”
“An experience or a dream?” Lancelot asked.
“Experience.” She pointed to the four masculine hands on her body, two near her waist, the other two on her upper thighs. “Two men. A ménage.”
Hugo’s gaze lingered on the drawing a second longer before he looked at her, not bothering to voice the question again.
“A dream,” she whispered.
Hugo and Lancelot glanced at one another, then back to her.
“You said you’re not lovers.” She closed the book. “I feel the electricity between you.” She held out her hands, and they took them. She sucked in air at the sharp awareness that pierced her when skin met skin. “And I feel it when you touch me. Am I wrong to think you, both of you, are attracted to me?”
“You are radiant,” Hugo murmured.
“No, you aren’t wrong,” Lancelot growled. He inhaled through his nose. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”
“Perhaps a statement, instead of a question.” Sylvia smiled, though she felt nervous in addition to excited. “I think we should have sex.”
Lancelot turned in his chair, spotted their server, and called out, “Check, please.”
Chapter Eight
Lancelot followed Sylvia through her quiet home, down the short hallway to her bedroom. Hugo was right behind him.
He’d slipped away briefly after they’d arrived at the restaurant under the guise of using the toilet. He had actually slipped back outside and placed a quick call to Lorelei, to pass on the information Alicia was in Florida. Of course, in typical Lorelei fashion, she’d blasted his ass for waking her up with fuck-all, asking him if he had a clue how fucking big Florida was. He’d also passed on Oscar’s tricks for tracking people down, which—he could only assume—was information worthy of being shared because she stopped blistering his ears. She’d instructed him to remain with Sylvia and to try to find a way back into Oscar’s “workroom.”
Remaining with Sylvia was not going to be a hardship. Conversation on the drive back to her house from the restaurant had become more personal, the pillow talk of new lovers. Each of them had spoken about their first love, which had ultimately led to their first heartbreaks.
Sylvia was unlike any woman he’d ever met before. The only word he could think to describe her was genuine. As a poet and a romantic, he suspected she might balk at that word, but in his mind, it was the highest compliment there was.
He’d grown up surrounded by people holding their breath, tiptoeing, sometimes hiding. Neither he, his mother, nor his siblings ever knew what each night would bring when their dad returned home. As such, they’d lived much of their lives on guard.
After only a few hours with Sylvia, he felt as if he knew more about her, her dreams, her hopes, than he did of his younger sister or his mum. His dad had taught them to be wary and distrustful of men. He hadn’t recognized just how much until now, until Sylvia. And for the first time in his life, he hated his father, hated how his drinking had ruined not only his life, but those of the people he should have loved more than the booze.
Sylvia lit a candle on a tall dresser near the bed, and then another on her dressing table. She didn’t bother to turn on any lights. The candles and the bright moonlight streaming through the sheer curtains created the perfect atmosphere.
She turned to face them, her head tilting as her eyes landed on Lancelot’s face. “Are you okay with this?”
He realized his thoughts showed on his face, so he worked to school his features, to put the past away. It had no place here.
“I’m exactly where I want to be, Sylvie.”
She smiled. “My grandmother used to call me Sylvie. My mother disapproved, said if she wanted her daughter called Sylvie, she would have named me that. Of course, saying that to Grandma only ensured she doubled-down and did it more. She was the only person brave enough to cross my mother on that front, however.”
“You miss her,” Hugo mused, reaching out to take Sylvia’s hand, lifting it to kiss.
She nodded, even as she blushed. “Very much. She would have been very taken by the two of you. She was a sucker for accents as well.”
They fell quiet. Hugo held Sylvia’s hand, flat against his chest, the two of them looking at each other as Lancelot remained apart from them, the observer.
The moment was steeped in hunger, yet none of them moved to the next level. They stood on the threshold of her dream.
Hugo lifted his other hand, drawing the backs of his fingers over her cheek. She smiled, turning her face toward his touch, kissing his knuckles at the last second.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
Hugo, ever the academic, took her question far too seriously. “There have been countless articles written about the subject, with arguments ranging from those who take an epistemic approach, claiming there isn’t enough information available to make such a claim. Then there’s the existential reason that—”
“I do,” Lancelot interjected. If he let Hugo speak much longer, the moment would be ruined. Lancelot didn’t know what most of those words meant, though it was clear from the way Sylvia’s
eyes lit up that she did. And she’d be more than happy to dive into a debate on the subject. While he didn’t consider himself a stupid man, he’d spent a fair part of the day struggling to follow everything Hugo and Sylvia discussed.
But this wasn’t the time for talking. There was so much more to explore without words.
Sylvia glanced Lancelot’s way. For a moment, he thought perhaps she was reading his face, trying to discover if he was lying.
Truth was…he wasn’t. He did believe in love at first sight.
Something that must have been evident because she smiled. “So do I. Today has been an unexpected surprise. When I woke up this morning, I anticipated routine. And instead…you’re both here. And we’re…”
Hugo reached for her, gripping her waist, pulling her against him. “We’re going to be lovers.”
Sylvia ran her fingertips over Hugo’s lips. “Lovers,” she repeated.
Hugo kissed her as Lancelot watched, surprised by the passion behind the embrace. Hugo’s outward appearance was that of an academic, a staid, serious man, ruled by reason rather than emotion.
His kiss defied that.
Hugo’s arms slid around her back, pulling her even closer as he pressed her lips open. Lancelot caught quick glimpses of their tongues touching, tasting.
Lancelot was not, had never been, the type of man to hang back. If anyone threatened a friend in a bar brawl, Lancelot was the first one rising to stand next to him, ready to defend. When his father came home drunk and violent, Lancelot stepped between him and his mother. And when he took a woman to his bed, he held back nothing.
But this was something different. For one thing, he’d never shared a woman before. That would probably surprise Hugo, given the fact they were both members of an organization built on trinity marriages. Secondly, and most shockingly, Lancelot didn’t feel separate from them.
Hugo and Sylvia might be sharing the kiss, but they were both very aware of Lancelot’s presence. Lancelot wasn’t sure how he knew that. He just did.