by Mari Carr
Her assertion was powerful, but her body betrayed her. Her nipples were poking through her t-shirt and she shifted in her seat, pressing her legs together. Most men would have heard the words and taken them at face value, but Justin had learned a long time ago that the most interesting information was shared through a different sort of language.
Justin reached out despite his better judgment and ran a finger along her arm. “You should never say never, Bells.”
Just like that, the tension returned. Justin’s cock was erect, aching. It was time to rein things in or this was going to take a hard left down a street he feared neither Ned nor Bella had any intention of taking…at least not tonight. Justin intended to change their minds on that. Soon.
Bella must have recognized the danger. She pasted on a carefree smile that didn’t fool any of them and reached for her purse. “Well, I’m tired. My bosses are slave drivers and I have a big project to work on tomorrow. I guess I should call it a night.”
Justin watched something come to life in Ned’s eyes.
“Slave drivers?” Ned’s voice was deep, with a rough timbre that sent the subs at the club to their knees before he finished giving the command. “Is that what this feels like to you, Bella? We give the orders and you obey?”
“You’re the bosses. Of course I do what you tell me.”
Ned leaned closer. “I didn’t tell you to work this weekend.”
Bella’s joke about working through the weekend had clearly revealed something that should have been obvious to both of them. Suddenly, everything Bella did at work took on a new meaning.
She was a diligent worker, always jumping to do whatever Ned or Justin asked. Usually, Bella moved quickly to please them. One of them might ask her to create a new logo or to enhance the color of a design and she’d immediately switch over to that project with no question or complaint about having other work to do.
Bella leaned away from Ned, a dangerous move. “I know, but I just thought you’d like it if I got a jump on—”
Ned reached out, grasping Bella’s arm, halting her retreat. “We don’t expect you to give up your weekends simply to please us.”
Bella squirmed in her chair again. For a moment, Justin imagined he could feel the heat radiating from her body, could smell her arousal. Her breathing grew more rapid.
“I like to make you happy,” she confessed, her words coming out no louder than a whisper.
Justin had tried to dismiss what seemed her submissive reactions as wishful thinking, but after listening to her tonight, he knew he was right. Her submissiveness was instinctual, though he was certain Bella didn’t recognize or comprehend it. Hell, he hadn’t even noticed it because she buried it deep beneath a powerful, indomitable spirit. She was spunky, opinionated and bold. He couldn’t believe it had taken this many years for him to wake up and see the writing on the wall.
No doubt Bella viewed her actions as a strong work ethic. But to Justin, her natural responses to his demands felt heady, horny, heavenly.
However, there were still too many obstacles to overcome, too many barriers standing in their way. The main one was sitting across the table, suddenly shooting daggers at him. Apparently Ned wasn’t happy about the knowledge he’d just acquired.
He would refuse to consider taking their relationship to the next level. And given the angry look on Ned’s face, Justin suspected he was going to spend the next few hours enduring a lecture from his friend on just why they couldn’t seduce their beautiful Bella.
Ned returned her smile. “You do make us happy. Don’t work too hard this weekend, Bella.”
She lifted one shoulder casually. “It’s no big deal. It’s not like I have anything else going on. I’ll see you guys on Monday.” She waved as they both said goodbye. Ned watched her walk completely out of the bar before he turned to glare at Justin.
“Forget it. Forget everything that happened at this table,” Ned warned.
Justin didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up his beer and took a long swig. Finally, he leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “No. I don’t think I will.”
Ned rubbed his eyes wearily. “She’s our best employee, Justin. I just finished telling her how unprofessional it was of her trainer to start an affair with her. That’s child’s play on the concept of unethical conduct compared to what you’re thinking of doing.”
“Not really.”
Ned didn’t respond immediately. Justin wondered briefly if his friend was planning to define a few words for him. Ned was one of the shrewdest, most intelligent men he’d ever met. He didn’t speak without thinking. And his expression told Justin he was definitely plotting one hell of a response.
He briefly debated warning Ned to save his breath. After all, his friend should know by now that Justin never approached things from a normal point of view.
Ned often remarked that Justin’s unconventional upbringing had left him with an eccentric view of how life should be lived. Justin always took that comment as a compliment, though he suspected Ned didn’t intend it as such.
To state it baldly, Justin had been an accident. His mother had gotten pregnant with him during her senior year of college, after which, his sperm donor dad disappeared. For a few years, Mama had raised him on her own. Until she met and married his stepfather. Ralph Lewis, a former boxer, had been a giant of a man, gruff and uneducated, and he’d taken Justin in and raised him as his own.
His mother, a former social worker, had taken in countless foster children over the years. Justin had so many brothers and sisters, his mother had started putting up two Christmas trees each year because there weren’t enough boughs on one tree to hang all the homemade ornaments.
Papa Lewis had worked on an oilrig, absent from the family home for months at a time. He’d passed away from a massive heart attack several years earlier, and Justin missed him profoundly.
Ned sighed heavily, exhaustion rife in his voice. “Justin, I’m serious. Whatever it is you’re thinking, you need to stop now. We’re not seducing Bella.”
“You’re right.”
Justin’s quick agreement had clearly not set his friend’s mind at ease when Ned asked, “I am?”
Justin nodded. “We’re not seducing her. We’re marrying her.”
Chapter Two
You’re out of your mind.” Ned paced around the office on Monday morning as Justin leaned back in his chair and propped his size-twelve tennis shoes up on the cluttered surface of his desk.
Ned wasn’t sure how his partner could do his job in such chaos, preferring to work in his own neat, well-organized space down the hall. Justin’s office always looked as if someone had just dropped a bomb on it.
“It’s time to think outside the box, Ned. Stop looking at the world through conventional eyes and consider what I’m proposing.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. All damn weekend. What you’re proposing is crazy.”
“Is it?” Justin gave him a long, steady, assessing stare that caused Ned to stop in his tracks and truly consider his friend’s unorthodox suggestion once again. Justin had spent nearly two hours on Friday night laying out the mother of all life plans for Ned, insisting that the two of them would never be satisfied in traditional marriages, never be happy as “one man and one woman.”
Ned didn’t want to admit to the part of him that knew Justin was right. He’d taken women to his bed without Justin, but the experience always paled in comparison, left him almost bored. However, it was a far cry from the occasional night of threesome sex to a committed ménage relationship.
Even so, when Ned saw his future, imagined his life twenty years from now, Justin was there. He was a part of it. That was the thought that had played out in his mind pretty much nonstop all weekend. That and the realization that Bella was the perfect woman to complete the triad.
Ned didn’t reply to Justin’s question and the silence in the room continued for several minutes. Ned had thought of little else since Friday night when Justin firs
t suggested his idea.
To his best friend’s credit, Justin didn’t fill the quiet with chatter or keep trying to persuade him. Instead, he let Ned put the pieces together for himself. And as more and more of them fell into place, Ned found himself longing for exactly what Justin was suggesting. The answer was completely out of the realm of normalcy, and yet it felt perfect.
Then he realized his opinion really didn’t matter as reality laced with fear reared its ugly head. “Bella will never agree to it.”
Justin clearly didn’t agree. “Finish thinking it through. Stop looking at this from your perspective and try to see it from hers.”
Ned dropped down into the chair across from Justin and considered the past six years. He’d convinced himself that Bella had captured his attention with her talent as a graphic artist and she’d earned his friendship because of her quick wit and straight-shooting, no-nonsense approach to life.
But now he realized it wasn’t those things that had captured and held his attention at all. The blinders had fallen away, opening him up to a weekend spent fantasizing too much about their pretty young artist. She was a submissive, and she’d been obeying him in very subtle, sexy ways for years. That idea had kept his cock hard for days. He’d jacked off more times than he could count since Friday—his dick was actually sore—and he’d slept precious little.
Justin’s idea of claiming her, seducing her, trying to win her heart, had driven him nearly insane with lust and longing. Ned liked to consider himself a practical, reasonable man, but nothing about Bella felt rational. He’d been walking around since that damn happy hour like a man holding on to a live wire. He knew he should let go, but he was addicted to the shock, the current. He needed more.
Then he’d run into her this morning—literally—when he had stepped off the elevator. Her fresh, floral perfume and the slight pink hue that touched her cheeks had sent him from soft to erect in an instant. The way she lowered her eyes for just a split second—she’d obviously done a bit of fantasizing this weekend too—when he apologized for bumping into her made him long to touch her in extremely inappropriate ways.
Ned had never felt such a powerful lure to anyone before. Typically he was able to control the Dominant lurking beneath the surface, keeping the beast contained until nights when he could unleash him in the sex club…with true subs who longed for his commands.
But it wasn’t simply his physical needs driving this overwhelming attraction. Bella was intelligent, determined to succeed and funny. Her sense of humor rivaled Justin’s and the three of them had spent many late nights at work as she and Justin traded cutting, witty barbs.
Bella wasn’t a doormat. She wasn’t weak or easily controlled. While she may have submissive qualities, she wouldn’t accept them. In fact, he suspected she’d wage quite a battle against them, which poked the beast even more.
For the first time since meeting her, Ned struggled to remember Bella’s place in his life. She was an employee, a friend, not a sub or a lover. Friday night, Justin had turned on a light, blinding Ned and making it impossible for him to find the switch to turn it off.
“I’m amazed we didn’t notice her submissiveness right from the start.” Justin pulled his feet off the desk, leaning his elbows on the surface. “She was all but smacking us in the face with it.”
Justin confessed he’d recognized what was lurking beneath the surface about six months earlier, but he’d dismissed it. Ned had to hand it to Justin. His friend had hidden his feelings well.
“She doesn’t know she’s a submissive.”
Justin shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’s still there. It would only take a Dom—or two—to expose her to all that she’s missing. Not understanding something about yourself doesn’t mean it’s not who you are. You should know that. How many years did you struggle with your stronger sexual urges before you discovered BDSM, before you realized exactly what was missing for you in the bedroom?”
Too many years. Ned had been raised in a very conservative, religious home. As such, he’d never even heard of bondage or sadomasochism or Doms and subs until Justin found a sex club on the outskirts of the college campus during their senior year. While they’d indulged in countless threesomes prior to that, Ned had never realized how much more was out there. Justin had dragged Ned there one night and in three hot, eye-opening hours, Ned’s entire life changed.
Justin was right. Not understanding his urges hadn’t made him less Dominant. It had only confused and frustrated him. It was clear Bella was feeling the same way. After all, hadn’t she confessed as much at happy hour? She knew something was missing, but she didn’t know what.
“I’m not disagreeing with you about Bella’s submissive nature. We both know it’s there. And I’d love nothing more than to expose her to everything she’s missing, but Justin, she works for us. We’re her bosses.”
Justin waved his hand, dismissing Ned’s argument as unimportant. “That’s a lame excuse and you know it.”
“Not to her. Or to me. She uprooted herself and moved at least half a dozen states away from her family to work for us. She’s worked overtime in her personal life to switch from the mentality of small-town girl to the frenzy of the French Quarter. She won’t risk losing this job. Not easily anyway. And I don’t want to put her in that position.”
Ned stood again, his circuit back and forth across the room starting anew. Walking usually helped him think, but right now, his thoughts were a jumble—desire and common sense working in direct opposition of each other.
“We’re not going to fire her, even if things do go south. Which they won’t.”
Ned closed his eyes and shook his head. Justin lived his life in a perpetual state of optimism. It was refreshing…and annoying as hell.
“Goddammit, Justin. There are a million ways what you’re suggesting could fail. If we do decide to go through with this—”
“When we decide to go through with it,” Justin interjected.
Ned released a long sigh. “If or when, I think we need to be able to answer all of Bella’s concerns—logically, practically. We can’t just look at her and say, ‘We won’t fire you.’”
Justin pulled a sheet of paper from the mountain of crap on his desk. Ned tried not to marvel over how easily his friend had put his hands on exactly what he was looking for. “Here.”
Ned glanced at the paper, his eyes widening. “A contract? For sex? You’re out of your fucking mind.”
Justin was undaunted. “Just consider what it’s saying. We’ll ask Bella to give us one night to experiment. It’s totally risk-free.”
“I’m not giving her that goddamn piece of paper to sign. Besides, I thought you were thinking lifetime, not one-night stand.”
Justin shrugged. “I’ll admit I’m struggling with how to get this ball rolling. I think once we start, once she understands what we’re offering and how perfectly the three of us fit together, she’ll be all-in. But, like you said, that first step is tricky. Thought the contract would ease the burden.”
Ned rolled his eyes, letting the expression answer the obvious. Bella wasn’t the type of woman who would agree to sleep with someone—two someones—in such a businesslike, emotionless way. While she didn’t have a problem with casual affairs, Ned knew her well enough to know she probably didn’t sleep with someone on the first date. She was the type of woman who would want to get to know her potential lovers well before taking the leap.
Ned rubbed his brow, trying to ward off the coming headache. “You realize we’re asking for too much. Even if she would consent to sleeping with the boss, we’re not asking her to take just one, but both of us. Then, on top of that, we want her to bend to our will in the bedroom—and beyond. And, just when we’ve dropped those bombs, we add the forever caveat at the end. It’s preposterous.”
“I disagree. Besides, we’re not going to walk out there to her cubicle and propose. That’s a little too impulsive…even for me.”
Ned had always chastised his friend for
being impetuous, for failing to consider all the angles before jumping in with both feet. Of course, he also realized that was one of the reasons their friendship—and business—had flourished. They were polar opposites, but Justin’s spontaneity and Ned’s conservativeness seemed to blend in such a way that it could only be described as the sweet spot.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’ve retained enough of your wits to make that call.”
Justin chuckled. “It’s not easy. My fucking cock has been rock hard since Friday night. Considered calling you to see if you wanted to hit the club to blow off some steam, but then I realized I didn’t want to have sex with anyone except Bella.”
Ned sympathized. The same had been true for him. “That doesn’t change anything. We still have too many problems to overcome.”
Justin’s brows gathered. He was obviously deep in thought over their predicament.
Ned’s mind was churning as well over the trouble they’d somehow borrowed without even asking for it. He took a strange comfort from Justin’s expression, from his friend’s determination. Justin had a stubborn streak a mile wide. When he saw something he wanted, Justin plowed forward.
Problem was, he rarely stopped to look left or right before barreling straight across the four-lane highway—and that was what concerned Ned the most.
“I’m not sure we have as many issues as you think.”
Ned sighed heavily. “Bella’s submissiveness is buried in a mountain of practicality. You don’t really expect her to simply jump into something so extreme and unorthodox as a committed ménage, do you?”
Justin picked up a pen, tapping it rapidly on the surface of his desk. “Actually I do. Because I think she’s experiencing the same conundrum as us.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s attracted to both of us and can’t figure out a way to choose. We’d be taking that problem off the table.”
Ned considered that, tried to reconcile Justin’s assertion with past evidence. It was amazing how clear everything was now that his eyes were wide open. There had been countless tells in the past. The way Bella would touch each of them, nothing inappropriate, of course, but it wasn’t unusual for her to reach out and lay her hand on theirs whenever they were laughing or worried about something.