“No, Sal, I love Cruz.”
His fingers lift from the steering wheel as he talks with his hands even while driving. “Fine, you love Cruz. I love Cruz too. Have a relationship with him.”
“Wait…” I pivot, recharged, and ready to spar. “If you would’ve walked in that bedroom and I was sucking his dick, or he was banging my ass, you would be okay with this? You’re not normal!”
He snickers, “I’ve been telling you for years I’m fucked up. Don’t blame me that my self-assessment was spot on. And ya, I would’ve been okay with it as long as he stayed out of my nest.”
“And what would you have done?” I cattily ask. “Are you joining our party or walking out?”
“It would depend,” he says. “On whether or not I felt my presence was an intrusion. You’re allowed intimate private moments with Cruz, and I don’t need to be involved in those.”
“I’m allowed...”
“You are submissive,” he carefully reminds, tiptoeing around my obstacles. “And so is he. You are both my submissives.”
Sitting up, I lean on the console and clasp my hands. “And you never once worry about what happens if we run off together?”
“You won’t,” he arrogantly rebukes.
“How do you know that?”
“Because we are built to work as a unit,” he maintains, taking the exit for home. Fuck. It’s bad when I am thinking about The Dollhouse as home. “One of you will miss me, and the two of you will slowly implode. Don’t believe me?” he challenges with a devilish smirk. “Try it.”
“How do you know?” I ask, taking a drink of the water. “Tell me because I need to know.” I take another sip.
“Because I know Cruz is in love with you, but I also know he’s closer to running in the middle with his bisexuality than me.”
I spit all over myself. “You’re saying Cruz is gay-er than you!”
He chuckles and hands a napkin from his door to me. “I am saying Cruz is more inclined to have a solid, stable relationship with either sex.”
“… And you won’t?”
“I have limits.”
“And Cruz is a limitless well of blowjobs and anal?”
“I have had sex with four men—one of them was rape, and one of them was for a fuck ton of money. The other two were Dom and Cruz. I don’t have the history of encounters he does.”
I furrow my brow. “What history of encounters? What is this?”
“He had relationships with guys in high school. He hustled tricks in Chicago with men. He went gallivanting the world and found guys to hook up with. Cruz has a whole history you don’t know.”
“How many?”
“Quite a few,” he says, pulling into the grocery store parking lot.
“As many girls as you have?”
“Probably at least that many, if not more,” he says, killing the truck and tapping my nose. “Don’t fret. Just think of yourself as being special to him because you are. He won’t just stick his dick in any girl. That isn’t him.”
“… Is that you?”
“At one point, it was,” he mutters. “But not now. Now there is only one girl and one boy.”
“Do you think he’ll ever find our fourth?”
“… Are we swinging?”
“We might be,” I say with a shrug. “If she has a nice rack.”
“She may end up being he and have a nice dick.”
“He wouldn’t do that to you,” I sincerely whisper. “It’s me who will get eliminated.”
“Then we won’t be swinging because I won’t sleep with another guy. Nor will I be sleeping with my Aunt Cat…God, that sounds so fucking weird. Aunt Cat.”
“… You see my problem?”
“I see you stressing out over things that do not matter at this juncture. Stay in the present. Stop worrying Cruz is getting hitched. His desire to marry is almost nonexistent. Not everyone’s happily ever after comes with a ring, a cake, a white picket fence, and two-point-five kids. Mine sure doesn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He grins. “I’m trying to get you to lighten up. It’s a wrought iron fence and about seven kids.”
“Jesus…”
“I have to run in here and get some flour,” he says, brushing his fingers on my arm. “Do you need anything?”
A bizarre moment hits where I realize my badass mafia boy is going to buy flour—Huh? What? Why?
“Cake and tampons and...”
“… Chocolate?”
“Gross,” I reply. “Vanilla, duh. Mardi Gras decorations.”
“Hey…I had to make sure chocolate wasn’t needed.” He plants a kiss on my lips as I watch him hurry off. I check my phone and smile at Deacon’s text message.
“I know you’re close.”
I quickly respond, “I cannot wait to get home. I hurt and have cramps.”
“You’ll feel better when you get here.”
He has no idea.
Half an hour later, we pull into the driveway of the Southern Gothic estate. It smells like home. Finally. I expect Deacon to rush out to greet us, but he’s nowhere to be found.
We make our way into the house. Holding the bag of flour above his head, Sal rallies in the mudroom, “I brought you your goods!” He turns the corner before I do, and I hear, “Fucking hell…”
Deacon is in nothing but an apron.
With wet hair and glistening, inked skin, he grins in the black apron printed with dancing skeletons. It’s ridiculously cute on him…until he turns around…and frankly, if I were a dude, I’d want to bang that ass too.
“Thank God, I’m gonna make some motherfucking biscuits!”
Sal’s snarl is permanently etched onto his cheeks as Deacon spins around with a grin splattered on his face. I wedge past Sal and bridge the awkward distance between Deacon and I. His muscled arms embrace me as he kisses my head.
With a finger curled under my chin, he says, “And your hot bubble bath is already made M’lady.”
“You didn’t…”
“I did,” he informs with a smirk. “Master Bath.”
I walk from the kitchen to the connecting sitting room as the boys greet one another with smacks of their hands. I don’t think anything else until I twist back to find them passionately lip locked.
Well, I should have kissed him like that too.
... If we’re playing by Master Sal’s rules.
“Um,” I say as their lips part, but they stay entangled.
“Yes?”
“Can I have a drink?”
“Champagne is already poured,” Deacon says, grinning as Sal bites at his neck. I am jealously aroused. “Towels are out, and there is a fresh blade in my razor if you want to shave.”
Shit.
“Thank you!” I giddily reply. “Resume.” I toss my hand up and smile.
“Go!” Sal urges. I think he is talking to me until the sound of his palm smacking ass—I am well versed in this noise—sends a shockwave through me, and Deacon bounces before me.
“You don’t have to do this,” I excuse.
“What?” he asks, stalking closer and holding my cheeks before pulling my lips to his. His kiss is intoxicating, wild, and so very different from Sal. “You need to stop worrying about everything,” he mutters against my lip as he places my hand on his hard cock. “I know this is like the first time we’ve all been together for a while.”
“It isn’t that,” I say as Sal steps up and presses his hand to my lower back. “It’s that it has no end.”
Sal plays with my hair and swoops some of it over my shoulder. “You’re fretting over the end?”
I nod. “I am,” I answer, emotional. “Because what if I get so used to this, and it stops?”
“You’re freaking over a pain that may never come,” Deacon whispers as those sad blue eyes steal my heart. “Give us a chance to take care of you. Because you may never know how good it can be unless you drop the fear.”
“Or,” Sal
adds, smirking. “Just drop your pants, and you won’t be thinking about the end. Or at least not that end.” With one hand on Deacon’s shoulder and another on mine, he pushes us closer and encourages, “Love one another. Stop thinking I’m going to meltdown over this.”
“You do meltdown!” I argue.
Bending slightly, he stares with those mesmerizing emeralds at me. “Not over this.”
“Can I go make my biscuits?”
“Not yet,” Sal says. “Make her realize she can do this with you.”
Deacon blinks up at Sal. “I’m not sure I can help the wall between Iris and me. It will come down, or it won’t. But it’s going to be a damn shame if she doesn’t stop being so scared of me every time I’m in front of her. We have these incredible conversations in texts, and then we tend to lock up in person.”
“We didn’t in Florida,” I mumble, feeling ganged up on. “You’re both too much. I’m going to bathe.”
“Have fun touching my pussy!”
“I will.”
In the pedestal tub, I gaze out the windows at the rainy winter. I feel tired. Traveling is hard with convenience store or fast food on the road, a nice meal at the end, and a different bed every night. Whether twinkling on the side of the road or doing a balancing act above a toilet, you wouldn’t sit your worst enemy on; it’s exhausting.
I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy our time together, but it’s good to be home. And New Orleans is so close to Sugargrove, it may as well be home.
The trials of traveling are one of those things that don’t discriminate based on income bracket either. It doesn’t matter if it’s a swanky chariot with bells and whistles or a jalopy, we universally feel the grandeur of sunsets and the bellyache of congestion.
“… Fresh biscuit?” Deacon asks from the cracked door. I didn’t lock it. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did. The Masters have all the skeleton keys in triplicate. “I brought you unsalted butter and peach preserves.”
I smile as he shuts the door. It’s a bold statement, even if Sal could get in.
Picking up the potpourri dish off the folding table, Deacon sniffs the purple, green, and gold-colored mess before eyeing it like he isn’t sure if it’s quaint or tacky. I tend to agree. I try not to stare at his ass or his muscular thighs or his well-inked back and arms.
Ho-hum…
So, how is the weather?
The Dollhouse is more of an Unholy hub these days. Gone are the nightly parties and expensive call girls with fetish streaks. I never worked in a private club. My assignments with Angelo were more focused than that.
I was more of an infiltrator.
Dom would never have allowed the baby girl he once held to be working here. Still, I can understand the appeal for the clients and the girls. It’s a showpiece. He brings the antique table next to the tub and sets the plate of biscuits down.
“He’s got potpourri in every room,” I mention. “It’s a Dom thing.”
He is old school and doesn’t plug-in scents like the rest of the world. The crystal containers for the posh patchouli rose-scented yard debris are worth more than some people make in a month. He also has about two dozen spray scents.
But flamboyant?
Not a fucking chance in hell.
Coming closer, Deacon sets down the biscuits, throws about four towels on the floor, empties his apron pocket—smokes and phone—and squats by the tub.
Fuck.
Politics? Religion?
We’ll discuss it all if I can avoid this man.
“I like you.”
“I like your apron.”
And your blue eyes. And your gravelly voice. And your hands on my body.
God, I’m such a dumb ass.
“Too bad, I’m taking it off.” I quickly glance out the window.
Did you see that cardinal? I did. It was beautiful. I wonder if it has two bitches. Or maybe a lover boy and a bitch. Who really knows?
“Iris…” he whispers inches away from my cheek. “Stop avoiding me and scoot forward.”
If I could cram my body any closer to the front of the tub, my tits would be trying to get a pearl necklace out of the spigot.
He invades my bath. And I hear—the splash of the water.
Goddammit, no.
Beneath the water, I gasp, feeling his hands brace against my hips as he slides my ass back to him. “I called you every day for the last seven days. I texted you—first thing when I woke up, several times a day, and at night before I went to bed. And I hear nothing but crickets from you. You are my best friend, and you are avoiding me.”
Sitting with my back straight in the tub, I wonder how long I can hold this position. “... First thing when you woke up?”
“Yes,” he says, running his wet hand over his hair. “And when I went to bed.”
I peer over my shoulder at the seriousness of his concern. “I just didn’t expect you to leave the room after everything we said and go get a blow job from Sal.”
“Sal can be remarkably persuasive…and healing…”
Without warning, he grabs my shoulders and forces my back to his chest as he engulfs his strong forearms around me. He’s got his right leg up on the edge of the tub, and I take my toe and run it over his calf.
“Where is Sal?”
“Watching a basketball game on the sofa,” he mutters, stroking my cheek with his damp fingers. “And he was talking to Dom. Did you know he had a girlfriend?”
“… What?” I loosen up as our friendship quickly resurfaces, and we lose the strange, weird feeling brewing between us, even if it is just temporary.
“Yeah.” He lifts his brows. “I just found out about it.”
“Who is it?”
“He’s been seeing her off and on for about three years,” he says, rubbing my arm. “And the best part, he was going over to fucking Boudreaux’s, paying for her services, until he moved her to Little Bee.”
“You’re fucking kidding…”
“Nope, some girl he’s evidently known for a long time,” he informs. “Sal is concerned.”
“That means he was with her during the marriage to Ashley and Jaid.”
“You got it,” he snarls as the drama heightens. At least it’s not our drama. Drying his hand on a towel, he pulls the smoke from the pack.
“Anything better?”
“Yeah, of course,” he says with the cigarette dangling from his lips. He pulls the unlit smoke from his mouth and hands the joint to me. It’s rolled in actual paper, no scripture included.
I pause. “I don’t usually get the first hit.”
“You do with me,” he insists, flicking the lighter. “Give that a few, your cramps will be gone.”
Oh. Thank God.
I wouldn’t want you to have to finger fuck me.
“The problem is we haven’t been the same since Japan,” I mumble as the spigot drips. “We did things…”
“Yes, I remember them very clearly, early in the morning and late at night.”
“... Before or after the texts?”
“Sometimes during.” He grins, and I laugh. It feels good, and so does the back of his hand grazing down the sides of my breasts. “Stop running from me.”
“And if I don’t listen?”
In a tone I rarely hear from Deacon, he seductively declares, “I will get my point across one way or another.” His finger dips between my legs, and I gasp, arching against him, and closing my eyes. “You need to trust your Masters to do what is best for you. Let us take care of you.”
“Yes, Sir. But I’m going to hurt you when I say—I do.”
“No, baby, if you say I do to Sal, you say I do to me too. Sal and I will be together forever. We may fight. We may knock each other around. But we will always boomerang back because, in the end, we both know—we’re better together than apart.”
“… So, I should let go?”
“Let the fuck go… This is what we’ve wanted for years,” he persists as one hand works magic on my clit, an
d the other plays with my nipple. “Trust us.”
“You’re going to make me come, Deacon.”
“That’s my girl,” he soothes as my ass rubs against his cock. “Come for me, beautiful.”
And I do.
26
All That A$$
His Ride
“What are you two doing?” Sal asks, walking into the bathroom. He looks curiously at Iris and me. “Why the hell are you holding a tube of lipstick? And why does she look so damn good?”
“Apparently, yo boy gots some skillz,” Iris says, going ghetto with her best daego. We both laugh.
“Close your mouth,” I request as I finish painting the doll. “Done. Now I am going to pick an outfit.”
“Oh, Lord,” Sal grumbles, dressed in black cargos and a gray Henley, showing every chiseled curve. “Did you have a nice bath?”
“I did,” Iris says as I dig through the closet, holding up outfits to compare the color against her skin. She smiles at me. “It was very enlightening.”
“How about green dress with the metallic threads?”
“That is fucking gorgeous!” Iris marvels. I go shopping—a lot. With Ma. Or alone. And whenever I see something I know Iris will look spectacular in or Sal will love on her, I buy it. It’s a rare day for me not to be in jeans and a t-shirt, but those two, I’ll be dressing them until their last breath. Ignore the fact I have like three hundred pairs of jeans and about as many sneakers. “What are you wearing?”
“Me?” I ask as my eyes dart side-to-side. “Jeans and a t-shirt?”
“No.” Iris slides off the counter and out of her towel. Sal’s brow flicks up as she rummages through the closet. “These gray pants and this black shirt.”
“You realize Sal and I are going to be opposite?”
“I do.” She nods with a grin and spots the black corset I bought for her. “Can I wear this?”
“Of course, I bought it for you. The matching panties are in the drawer.”
“Does anyone know where we’re going?” Sal asks, sitting on the bathroom counter with his nose in his phone.
“We could always go to Gina’s,” Iris yells from the other room before returning in the black floral lace panties with purple trim.
Diary of a Submissive (a Tomb of Ashen Tears Book 4) Page 21