The Baby (The Boss #5)

by Abigail Barnette

  Neil’s cock stretched my jaw wide. When I reached up to take him into my hand, he pushed my hands away. “No. Touch yourself.”

  I obliged, my fingers drifting down to my clit and to touch Emir’s slippery skin as his cock glided in and out. I rubbed myself frantically, unable to catch my breath as Neil fucked my face. My body tightened, and once again, Emir’s hands were at my back, drawing me up like a bowstring. My foot cramped, my hips bucked, and I was there, my entire body reduced to the throb of my clit and the clench of my cunt. The pleasure didn’t relent, pushed along by Emir’s pounding cock. Neil groaned and pulled back, the tip of his erection resting on my lower lip. He held my jaw open, his body stiffening as he came in ropes of hot semen against my tongue.

  “Don’t swallow,” Emir said breathlessly. I wondered why, until he leaned over and kissed me, his tongue sweeping against mine, Neil’s cum passing between us. Emir’s sharp shout of release was muffled by my mouth. The pulse of his cock jerking as he came deep inside took me the rest of the way, and I squeezed around him, my heels digging into his ass.

  He broke our kiss, panting, and looked up to Neil. Emir’s eyes were hazy and unfocused, and he laughed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I feel like I lost consciousness.”

  Neil leaned down and kissed me, briefly. “What do you need first?”

  “A shower,” I said, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. He helped me up, but my legs still trembled from the adrenaline coursing through me. My heart pounded, and I sagged against Neil.

  “Here,” Emir said. “Let me.”

  I didn’t protest as he scooped me up in his arms and carried me to the bathroom. I tucked my make-up smeared face against his chest. Neil went ahead of us to turn on the taps in the shower. There were eleven multi-directional showerheads, but he opted instead for the rainfall attachment in the center. Emir set me on my feet, but I was still wobbly, so I held onto his shoulders as we stepped into the water.

  “Lean on me,” he said softly, bringing our wet skin together. I laid my cheek against his chest and let him support me as Neil stepped up behind us. I heard the click of a bottle opening.

  “Brace yourself, this is cold,” Neil warned before his hands spread the shampoo over my hair. I moaned, and my knees went weak. The gentle scrubbing of his fingers against my scalp eased away the negative emotions that always threatened after a hard session. Though I craved pain, humiliation, and total domination, the reality of what I’d done, what I’d let them do to me, could bring me crashing down.

  It affected Neil, too. We’d discussed before how ashamed he sometimes felt after we played. Though he knew I enjoyed the things he did to me, he still sometimes struggled with his own desire to hurt me during our scenes. The tender aftercare he provided wasn’t just for me, but for both of us. It reminded us of the purpose of our play.

  While Neil washed my hair, Emir stroked his fingers up and down my spine, sluicing the water over my skin.

  “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as your face when you came,” he murmured to me. “I’ve never seen pain so artfully transformed.”

  The kind words brought tears to my eyes. Neil’s hands briefly stilled, and his body pressed closer as he and Emir kissed, slow and deep, above my head. I tilted my face up, and their mouths found mine, first Emir’s, then Neil’s.

  After all three of us washed and dried, we went back to the bedroom. It still smelled like sex and sweat, and despite the satiety that made my limbs heavy and my brain weightless, the scent woke my appetite. Neil pulled the duvet back and lay me on the clean sheets, on my side so I could roll to my stomach and not put pressure on the marks on my behind. “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared briefly, and I could only blink up at Emir sleepily.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice tired. “This has made my visit to New York more than worth the tedious flight.”

  “I thought all billionaires had their own private jets,” I said. My voice was hoarse. I hadn’t realized how hoarse.

  “Two,” Emir said with a smirk. “But that doesn’t mean I like to be trapped in one for twelve hours.”

  “I’m glad we could welcome you with open…arms.” I raised an eyebrow, upping the cheese factor of my double entendre.

  Emir mimed putting on sunglasses and quietly imitated the CSI theme song.

  “For you,” Neil said when he returned. He handed me an ice-cold bottled water, and I leaned up on my elbows to gulp it down.

  “One for you,” he said, and tossed another bottle to Emir. Neil also carried our small first aid kit. He sat beside me on the bed and popped the plastic latches. He withdrew some Tegaderm film—a fun little bandage we’d learned about during his chemotherapy two years before—and some first aid ointment. Emir stretched out beside me on the bed while Neil tended to the cuts inflicted by the cane, and when I was properly tended and cared for, Neil joined us.

  The intimacy of the evening had been dizzying. Now, the three of us needed some recovery. Neil lay before me, our legs threaded together, his forehead resting against mine. Emir spooned me, his strong arm lying across my waist while the other arched over my head so his hand could find Neil’s. We dozed together that way, warm and clean and naked, communicating our feelings for each other through lazy touches and languorous kisses as we drifted in and out of slumber. Hours later, Emir rolled to his back and sighed. “I should go. It’s late, and I have a very long day tomorrow.”

  I made a disappointed mewl, but I couldn’t be greedy. I hadn’t even expected to see him tonight. “At least come back to the house and have something to eat. We have leftovers.”

  “We always have leftovers,” Neil said with a roll of his eyes. “Our housekeeper cooks for a banquet every night, regardless of how many people we tell her to expect.”

  We found our clothes—I took a comfy pair of fleece pants and a long-sleeved tee from the comfort room—and headed out to the car. Neil and Emir had apparently driven together from the house. Maybe that was when they’d talked about the new relationship dynamic. I’d been caught up in the sex, and I hadn’t given that part a thought with a clear head. It wasn’t so much that they had been alone together—I didn’t think Neil would have sex with Emir without telling me, because it was one of our rules—but it was disconcerting that they’d left me out of such an important conversation.

  * * * *

  When we walked through the kitchen door of the main house, we weren’t Leif, Chloe, and Emir, anymore, but Neil, Sophie, and El-Mudad. Just a married couple and their friend.

  “What brings you to New York in January?” I asked him with a yawn as Neil went to the refrigerator and began pulling out food. As an aside, I added, “Get the coq au vin that was left over last night.”

  “I already was, darling,” Neil answered, the placid domesticity of our interactions returning automatically. He was my master in the bedroom—and anywhere else we had sex—but we were a completely normal couple outside of it.

  El-Mudad leaned his elbows on the counter, the fingers of his clasped hands laced together. “The benefit, of course.”

  “Neil’s benefit?” I asked, looking between the two of them. “For the center?”

  Neil had come up with the idea for the Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center in the fall, but it was set to open at the end of the month. Neil had been so gung ho about the project that he’d sunk a ton of our money into it to get it off the ground faster than a project that size could conceivably take off. The facility itself was paid for, from the renovation of the building to the purchase of every last office supply, but we wanted it to run on its own steam. Hence the black tie gala we were holding on Saturday night.

  “Yes, I heard about your dire financial situation,” El-Mudad teased.

  “Oh, the gossip mill.” I laughed. It had apparently been news when Neil had slipped from tenth richest Brit to twelfth, because it indicated some dire state of affairs for him. What nobody bothered to acknowledge about the situation was the
fact eleven and twelve both became richer than us. It had nothing to do with losing money, but everyone seemed to be talking about how Neil’s misguided philanthropy was bankrupting us.

  “El-Mudad is making a very generous donation,” Neil said, winking at him.

  “Isn’t that kind of high profile?” I asked, looking between the two of them. El-Mudad had been very careful to not link us in public, due to the custody situation between himself and his ex-wife. She’d known about his sexual involvement with us, and Emir had feared that the details might be made public if she felt it gave her leverage.

  I didn’t mind the secrecy, myself. My mother had recently moved into our guesthouse. She was just starting to get used to the idea of Neil and I as a couple, despite our twenty-four-year age difference, and she’d been surprisingly cool about the revelation that Neil and I were both bisexual. But I didn’t want her to know that my husband and I had a lover with whom we engaged in super-hot three-ways.

  Especially since, as time went on, the three of us were becoming more and more emotionally entangled.

  We needed to clear some of those details up.

  “Hey, can we have a little three-way pals roundtable discussion here?” I asked, and both of them stopped what they were doing. Whenever we’d talked about our sexual arrangements before, it had been about limits and personal policies and preferences. In our private relations with each other, we’d been cordial.

  “Certainly,” El-Mudad agreed. “Shall we move to the actual round table?” He grinned and pointed to the one near the huge arched windows that showed a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean during the day.

  “Let me heat this up, first,” Neil said, popping the covered ceramic dish into the microwave.

  “I just wanted to discuss this whole monogamy thing you two apparently had a conversation about before I got here.” That didn’t quite sit right with me, that they had discussed our relationship without me being present. I’d just been too horny to realize it at the time. “First of all, don’t do that again.”

  “If that’s your wish,” El-Mudad said easily.

  Neil gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. You’re right, that crossed a line. I spoke for you as a part of our marital unit, rather than letting you participate in the conversation as an individual. I won’t do it again.”

  “Good.” That eased some of the tension I’d been holding in my shoulders. “Look, I’m going to be straight up. El-Mudad, you are so important to both of us—” I broke off to reach for his hand, and he took mine, covering it with his. I went on, “But I just learned this totally new, awesome thing about my own sexuality. And I don’t want to limit myself to dudes.”

  “I would never want you to consider yourself limited,” he told me with a reassuring squeeze of his fingers. “But I’m tired of being free. I would like to see only the two of you. What you do on your own, I will accept.”

  “But what about safety?” Neil asked. “I trust you, and Sophie has made it clear that she trusts you. But I would never want you to feel that we would put you in any danger—”

  “I don’t worry about that,” El-Mudad said with a wave of his hand. “When there was a chance I would endanger the two of you, or endanger my other partners, of course I didn’t care to engage in unprotected play. But, while I am not seeing anyone else…”

  “And you’ll tell us, of course, should you get a new partner?” Neil said, though it was a foregone conclusion.

  “Oh, of course,” Emir agreed.

  There’d been a time in my life when I wouldn’t have been able to discuss my sexuality so frankly. And safe sex talk? Had seemed about as sexy as macaroni and cheese.

  My stomach rumbled. Okay, macaroni and cheese actually seemed pretty damn sexy, considering the fact I hadn’t eaten since lunch time.

  But the point was, since I’d met Neil, I’d learned so much about myself, and about what I wanted from a relationship. I never would have been able to share my husband with another partner; I would have been too insecure and jealous. Neil’s commitment to me and mine to him wasn’t a restriction, but an opportunity.

  The microwave peeped, and Neil served us up the coq au vin. For billionaires, we sure were fancy. I laughed at the thought. People probably assumed that, because of Neil’s wealth, we had a full-time chef we could rouse from bed for late night snacks, and a household staff who would indulge our every whim. The truth was, our normalcy startled even me, at times. And I lived here every day.

  As we ate, El-Mudad told us stories about his daughters, who were fourteen and eleven. In the past, he’d rarely shared anything about them. That part of his life hadn’t exactly been off-limits, but he’d definitely guarded it. It seemed like his divorce had freed him up in that way, too; he was more comfortable telling us details about his life we wouldn’t have learned before.

  In return, we told him all about Olivia, Neil’s granddaughter. She was almost eight months old, and officially the cutest butterball anyone had ever seen. Neil was as utterly in love with her as he was with his daughter, Emma, and it showed every time he talked about them.

  I felt a little like the odd duck out in the conversation. Neil and Emir were both fathers. I had no idea what it was like to be a parent. I loved Olivia an unreasonable amount, but I would never feel what it was like to be responsible for another human life. That was fine with me, don’t get me wrong. I’d known my entire life that I didn’t want to have kids, and Neil had made it clear at the beginning of our relationship that he was finished raising them, himself. But not wanting kids didn’t make me feel any less out of place around two people I loved who both had them and could share that experience.

  Neil seemed to know what I was feeling, because he reached across the table and took my hand, giving it a brief squeeze before he went back to his food.

  “Well, I do hate to eat and run,” El-Mudad said with a sigh. “But the helicopter is waiting.”

  “Your pilot has been waiting for you this whole time?” I asked, my eyes boggling.

  “He’s being paid to, I assure you.” El-Mudad frowned, and I got the sense that I was, yet again, billionairing wrong.

  “I’ll drive you out to the helipad,” Neil offered, and I volunteered to stay behind and wash up the dishes.

  There was something between the two of them that ran deeper than the bond between all three of us. It didn’t threaten my marriage, so I didn’t mind giving them the time alone, but when Neil returned, he would almost certainly report all the details to me, just to keep everything transparent.

  There was no sense running the dishwasher, so I did the few dishes we’d dirtied by hand, then stumbled to the bedroom. The clock on the microwave had read three in the morning, and my entire body ached. I stripped off my pajamas as I walked. Guilt would make me take care of those before Julia, our housekeeper, arrived in the morning.

  I pulled back the covers and climbed onto the cool, clean sheets, nuzzling my head into my pillow. Still, the bed wouldn’t feel quite right until Neil was in it beside me. I left the bedside light on and played with my phone while I waited for Neil to return.

  When he came in, he grinned at me. “How’s your bum?”

  “Sore as hell.” I laughed. “I am going to be sitting down carefully, for a while.”

  He sat beside me on the bed and took my hand, pulling it to his lips. “You know that I love you, don’t you?”

  It was such a weird question I had to push myself up to answer him. “I hope you do. We’re married.”

  “I know.” He looked a little sheepish. “I worry sometimes, when… I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “You’ve been doing this a lot lately,” I said softly. “You’re, like, weirdly guilty after we play. If it’s bothering you—”

  “No, no—” he began, and I cut him off.

  “We’re doing that thing where we try to be polite when we should be honest.” I squeezed his hand. “Tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  He sighed he
avily. “I’m concerned lately, because I’ve been thinking more about my experience. You know that I never want to do anything without your express consent. But I worry that I’m pressuring you, somehow. That you may be doing some of this to please me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, all those orgasms. Gross.”

  “No, don’t joke,” he said, and the softness of his voice caught me off guard. Neil always sounded so sure of himself. It wasn’t something I figured he could drop by accident; in my short acquaintance with the fabulously wealthy of New York, I’d learned that people shed a lot of insecurity when their bank accounts swelled. That proved true outwardly, at least.

  “Do you think some of this sudden doubt might have to do with the whole—” I waved my free hand in limp circles, “—with the foundation? Maybe it’s bringing up some not-nice memories?”

  I was right, and he knew it. I saw his internal war in his eyes. He didn’t want to admit that his rape wasn’t a subject his emotions had put entirely to bed. Neil didn’t like it when things were out of his control, when so much control had been taken from him that night. He’d given his trust over to a man he’d loved, and that man had betrayed him in the most devastating way possible.

  Finally, Neil nodded and said, “Being in the public eye with this foundation seems to have brought up a lot of unresolved issues. Which I should have expected, I suppose.”

  “You put off dealing with what happened to you for, like, thirty years. That’s a long time. It’s not like you’re going to be magically healed, all of a sudden.” I sat up and forced myself not to wince at the pain that even our super soft bed caused. “I can’t fix any of that for you. But I promise, I will never just go along with what we do because I think you want me to.”

  “Thank you for that reassurance,” he said, looking down at our still-joined hands. Left and left, our wedding rings close together.

  “Besides, since when have I ever done anything I didn’t want to do?” I asked with a laugh, and that got a smile out of him, finally. The silence that fell in the next moment was warm, not tense. It was as if all he’d really needed was to hear what he already knew.