She’d spent most of the last fifteen years completely bereft of affection.
“Come back to me, sweetie.”
“I’m sorry.” She knew he heard the catch in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. She snuggled more deeply into his arms and sighed. Closing her eyes, she reached for calm, not really surprised when it came easier than it ever had before.
“Don’t apologize, Jillian. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She turned in his arms so she could show him that she really was all right. “I was just having a moment.”
“You’re allowed.” He kept his gaze locked on hers as he lightly ran his hands up and down her arms. “We’ve only really just begun this journey, the three of us. We can’t expect you to completely forget what came before us overnight.”
“I’d like to. There are times when I’d just really like to do exactly that. Sometimes I think if I could just forget everything except Brandon…” She let the thought drop off, because it was a pointless line of thinking, really.
“I think we all feel that way at some point or other. I think all of us have regrets, Jillian. You can’t really live life and not make mistakes here and there.” Robert urged her closer, and smiled down at her. More than simple attraction glowed from his eyes. Gazing up at him, she saw something she’d rarely seen before, and never once from Neil. She saw respect.
“The secret,” he whispered, drawing her even closer, “is to not let those mistakes define you.” He leaned in to her and closed his lips over hers.
Jillian sank into his kiss, relishing the flavor of his mouth and the solid feel of his muscles under her hands and pressed close to her body. There was nothing tentative about the way Robert Jessop held a woman close and absolutely nothing “half measure” about the way he kissed, either.
His tongue swept into her mouth using a hungry, pulsing rhythm that reverberated deep inside her body. His hands cupped her face, and she felt surrounded by him. His mouth commanded hers and she felt every bit of herself devoured by every bit of him. She drank him in as if only he could quench her lifelong thirst. Her nipples hardened, her clit quivered, and moisture dampened her panties.
Emotions moved and swirled, like liquid shimmery colors on the palette called life, and Jillian was torn. Twin urges rose up inside her. Part of her wanted to rail against the cosmos that had seen her live so many years emotionally naked and alone. The rest of her just wanted to float on the bubbling joy of finally, finally finding what she’d missed all of her life.
Jillian needed to pull back, emotionally. How could she just dump all these emotions on this man, invest so much of her heart and soul into him and his brother? As he said, they’d barely gotten started. Oh, God, how could she believe for one minute that she could possibly—
“Don’t leave me. Please, don’t ever leave me.”
Jillian’s heart nearly ripped right out of her chest. Her heart, his voice. She hadn’t been the one to issue that ragged plea. It had been Robert, his lips lifted from her lips, his forehead pressed against her forehead as he gulped air and gave in to the feelings that assailed them both.
“I won’t. Not ever. I swear it.”
He trembled and she took his shaking into herself. He’d gone somewhere in his own mind, someplace she’d bet he rarely visited, and it was a place she knew, because she’d lived there. Jillian wrapped herself around him and held on tight. No more thoughts of pulling back whispered to her. No more illusions that this relationship was only new or tentative or temporary. That part of her that had always languished, that true server’s heart, rose up within her, filled with love for this man and his brother. In his way, Robert had been as wounded, and as needy as she. She understood that now, and so she said the only thing she could.
“I promise, Sir. I’ll never willingly leave you. I’ll be your sub for as long as you want me.”
She could never, ever pull back because here and now she had learned the truth. And the truth, rather than setting her free, had bound her heart and soul to this man and his brother—bound her more surely than the strongest of chains.
Chapter 17
“Will you tell us about him, baby?”
Jillian had thought David might be asleep when she and Robert returned from her apartment. But he hadn’t been. He’d slid a latex glove on over his bandaged hand and used some tape to make sure it stayed put. And then he’d climbed into the hot tub. That was where they found him, head thrown back, body stretched out, looking like the perfect picture of relaxation.
She and Robert had both immediately decided a soak in the hot tub to be an excellent idea. Their private time had consisted of nothing more than that one hot kiss and then the intimate moments when they’d simply held each other.
Jillian sighed in bliss after mimicking David’s pose. His question made her tense slightly.
She opened her eyes and looked from him to Robert. Both men sat there, one on either side of her, seeming relaxed. That, she felt certain, was a ruse if ever she’d seen one.
Jillian might be completely new to this whole D/s dynamic, but at its base, she thought the arrangement very basic and logical. After all, it was a relationship dynamic, which involved people, and people had their quirks and their tells. Twin people sometimes communicated eloquently without words.
“There really isn’t much to tell. It’s not like I was in an abusive marriage, or anything.” And it certainly didn’t escape her attention that it had been David to ask that question—the very question she’d felt certain had been on Robert’s lips just after she had that moment back at her apartment, that moment when she’d allowed the past to choke her.
“We’d still like to hear about your marriage, and your life before you moved to Lusty. We’d also like to hear about Brandon. Consider it part of the whole dating and getting-to-know-you dance.”
Jillian tried not to laugh. Now, they wanted to get to know her? So far, David was just acting like her boyfriend, instead of her Dom. She had no doubt he’d change his tactics if she continued to put him off.
And why the hell was she putting him off, anyway? Sometimes Jillian didn’t understand herself.
Fine, I can tell them whatever they want to know. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what I can tell you. I don’t think my story is particularly remarkable. In high school I met Neil Gillespie, who was the star of the track-and-field and football teams. He had a flock of beautiful girls who followed him everywhere he went, like his own personal entourage. I don’t think I ever found out what he even saw me. I really wasn’t much to look at in those days.”
“Jillian, you’re beautiful.” Robert’s quiet assertion, complete with a solid, non-blinking stare, sure did wonders for her ego.
“Thank you. But at seventeen I was more like the ugly duckling in that song by Jann Arden.”
“And Neil Gillespie picked you out from the crowd?”
She smiled at David. She could feel the tension from both men, but David seemed better at masking it. She thought that for the most part he’d mastered the art of letting stress roll off of him. Actually he’s mastered hiding his inner Dom. What a strange moment for an epiphany, yet Jillian knew it was true.
“He did. He had short little relationships with one girl or the next, but at the beginning of our senior year, he was there, at my locker, flirting with me, for God’s sake. At first I thought he was just making fun of me in a weird jock kind of way. He’d recently broken off with a girl who was beautiful and rich, probably the most beautiful girl in the entire school. But he persisted, said he was serious about dating me. In the beginning, it was good.” She let herself think about that for a moment. She hadn’t revisited the beginning of her relationship with Neil in a long time. It had been good, and oh, how her heart had soared having such a cute and strong boyfriend. She frowned. She’d been a bit shallow at seventeen. “He didn’t even pressure me overmuch to have sex with him.” She shook her head as she recalled her own naiveté, and the cliché of los
ing her virginity in the backseat of his car.
But she had, and while she hadn’t found sexual pleasure in the act, she recalled feeling as if she’d given Neil something good and precious. And he’d given her something good and precious and even more valuable than gold in return.
Not a bad memory, really, for the conception of her son.
“But we did, eventually, and I got pregnant.” She blinked and looked at each man in turn. “He never hesitated. I told him I was pregnant, and he said we were getting married. We married about a month after I turned eighteen.”
Robert nodded to her. “He manned up—as he should have.”
Jillian grinned. “Agreed, but you have to know a lot of young men wouldn’t have. Everyone thought he’d have had a shot at a scholarship if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Probably not,” David said. “He was probably one of those large fish in a small pond kind of athletes.”
“Well he certainly never seemed to miss being a jock.”
“And after you got married? What was it like? Your life together?”
Robert had taken over, and Jillian wasn’t surprised. He had no idea how to hide his inner Dom—which, she thought, really wasn’t so inner.
“Routine, I guess. He worked, most of the time. I worked. Brandon was born. He was the center of the universe for both of us. Neil was a pretty good dad, actually.”
“But a lousy husband.”
Jillian shook her head. “I wasn’t happy, but I’d made my peace with my life. As my mother liked to say, I’d made my bed and now I had to lie in it.”
“That expression just pisses me off,” Robert said.
Jillian shrugged. “But it was true. Look, he never hit me. He yelled, of course, but then so did I.”
Both men looked at her with a combination of pity and compassion. Jillian didn’t know why, but that look made her uncomfortable.
She sighed. “I took vows, okay? They meant something to me. Yes, I was unhappy. Deeply unhappy, if you want to know the truth. But I’d settled. I’d made my peace with that.”
“And he didn’t?”
“No. I guess while he did work most of the time and didn’t beat me, or anything, he did cheat. I found out, after our divorce, that he’d cheated on me almost from the beginning.”
“So you divorced him,” David said.
“No, he divorced me because some bimbo with perky boobs and lots of Botox sweet-talked him into leaving me and marrying her.”
Both men were silent for a few moments.
“I’ll bet she’s a ballbuster.” Robert said that quietly.
“Apparently. One of the reasons I was so glad to leave El Paso behind and come to Lusty is that over the last couple of months Neil had begun phoning me. At first he used the excuse of touching base with me about Brandon. But then he started dropping in—first at the clinic where I worked, and then at my home.”
“Let me guess,” David said. “He told you he wasn’t happy with the ho he dumped you for and he wanted you back.”
“Yeah.” Jillian shook her head. “When I moved here, I didn’t leave a forwarding address. Brandon knows where I am, of course. I’ve asked him not to tell his father. I hated doing that. I never wanted to ask him to pick sides in our divorce. But I did ask him, and he agreed.”
“And you’re totally mystified by your ex’s behavior, aren’t you, my little sub?”
She noticed that both Robert and David had big smiles on their faces. “Well, duh. I never understood why he wanted me in the first place. I mean, it’s not like our marriage was ever really very good, or anything.”
“I imagine it sure as hell was good for him,” David said. “What man wouldn’t want a woman who puts him ahead of herself, who smoothes the rough spots, and does all those pesky little chores to make his life easier?”
“You probably didn’t even realize you were doing it, Jillian.” Robert reached over and took her hand. “I’d bet my last dollar you treated the man like a king. He never even realized how good he had it until he left you, and he discovered that not every woman has a servant’s heart.”
“Did he say that? When he began to ‘drop by,’ did he tell you that his new wife didn’t treat him as well as you had done?”
Jillian met David’s gaze. His question cut to the heart of her anger over Neil’s efforts to ingratiate himself with her. “He said she didn’t understand him the way I had. I just took that to mean that she caught on to his cheating before I did and threatened to cut off his balls.”
Robert laughed, then brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “All those things you did for him, sweetie, that was your sub nature in action. Yes, infidelity was a sin he committed, but his greater sin was accepting your gift and not giving you one in turn. You took care of his needs, but he never once took care of yours. That is what the D/s relationship is all about. It’s a sharing of power, where you give us what we need, and we absolutely return the favor.”
“Not just between the sheets?” Jillian looked from one to the other of them. “Or in the hot tub? Because I have to tell you, he never made me come, not once. I learned early on how to fake an orgasm, after one particularly brutal time, when he was drunk, and he kept trying and he rubbed me so raw I bled.”
Robert actually winced. David picked up her other hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. She had to admit that she really liked having both of her hands held.
“No, sweetie, it’s not just about the sex.” Robert slid closer, and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “One of the things you need is to serve and to know that your service matters—that is your nature and when we dominate you in the bedroom, you know that you’re not only serving, you’re giving us maximum pleasure. That’s why you can climax with us.”
“Well, that, and the fact that we’re both smokin’ hot lovers.”
Jillian laughed, and then sobered as the thought formed. She understood now exactly what these men were talking about, and she certainly understood the appeal of taking these two men as her masters.
It was an exchange not only of power, but of service. She wasn’t being a “needy female” with them, because the truth was that they both had needs too, needs that only she could fulfill.
“You don’t think we’re smokin’ hot lovers?” David’s bottom lip pouted out in an exaggerated gesture.
Jillian blinked, because she’d been so deep into her own personal revelation, for a moment she felt disconnected, coming back to the real world.
“That’s not it,” Robert said quietly.
When Jillian turned to look at him, he said, “You finally get it, don’t you?”
The moment felt so huge she couldn’t speak. She could only nod. Because she kept her gaze locked on his, even though the sight of him blurred through her tears, she saw the way he looked at her, and for the first time in her life she felt beautiful, special, and completely okay.
She felt David move closer to her and loved the sensation of being the center of these two men. How could she have gotten so lucky? She felt so incredibly blessed.
She felt totally brand new.
“Teach me, please? Teach me everything you want me to know. Teach me how to behave when we go to that club of yours. I want…no, I need to please you.” She needed to honor them.
“You already do please me, Jillian. I love you.” Robert kissed her hand then pulled her into his arms. He kissed her, his lips nearly forceful, his tongue plundering her, tasting her, commanding her to submit.
She opened to him eagerly, giving and taking in equal measure. Pleasing him, she knew. Pleasing him and arousing him and giving him what he needed. When Robert eased his lips from hers, she reached up and stroked his face. “I love you, Robert.”
He released her to his brother. David’s arm slid around her from behind and she turned to him. “I love you, David.” She’d said those words in the past to a man who didn’t understand them, didn’t value them. He couldn’t.
These men treasured not
only her words, but her.
“I love you, Jillian. You’re ours.” He laid his mouth on her and drank her, sucking, swirling, licking until she thought her bones were melting. He broke their kiss, and used his thumb to brush over her lips. “Let’s get out and get dried. I want you on your knees.”
His words made her tingle, and Robert’s low chuckle caressed her female bits. It sounded to her as if she really did have two very Alpha masters.
Jillian didn’t waste a moment. She stood, but accepted their help getting out of the tub. They dried her quickly, gently, as the nerves inside her began to jump for joy.
She felt as if her new life was beginning right now, and she could hardly wait.
* * * *
“Boy oh boy, someone sure has been floating all afternoon,” Kelsey Benedict said.
“Humming along to the radio and wiggling her hips, uh-huh.” Tracy Alvarez-Kendall gave a little booty wiggle herself.
Michelle grinned at the gentle teasing. She’d arrived for the dinner shift because Carla had called in sick. So far she’d been kept pretty busy, and there hadn’t been any real time to chat. She’d gotten straight to work, the Tuesday crowd a little heavier than usual.
Michelle didn’t feel bad that there’d been no time to tell her cousins about the change in her relationship status. She wouldn’t have had to say a word, anyway. This was Lusty, Texas, after all, and by now the entire town would know that she’d had two dates with Joe Grant—and that he’d tried to suck her tongue out of her mouth in her parents’ driveway.
She, Michelle Amanda Parker, was actually involved in a relationship! Of course her thrill went far deeper than just that.
Finally she was in love—head over heels in love—and the man she loved, loved her back. He hadn’t actually asked her to marry him, but she knew with a confidence that felt completely foreign even as it went soul deep that it was only a matter of time.
“I’ve just been in an exceptionally good mood today,” Michelle said. It was hard to keep her smile in check, but she did her best.
Love Under Two Doctors [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 20