Woman in Hot Water [Wet and Willing 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Berengaria Brown

* * * *

  On Sunday morning Kendra tiptoed from the house, her shoes in her hand and her keys in her teeth. She’d compiled a list of cheap apartments and trailers and made appointments with a bunch of different realtors to see them all. Her first appointment was at seven thirty. She wasn’t too sure how she’d pay for her bond, but she knew she had to move out and real soon. Before she fell in love with her boss and his partner. Well, before she fell any deeper in love with them. She’d decided that if she had to, she’d sell her car and buy a bike, or maybe some inline skates, and use that as her transportation to work. Likely it’d trim a few pounds off her butt exercising more. Her old car wasn’t worth much, but she didn’t need it to sleep in and hold all her possessions anymore, so getting an apartment was her top priority.

  After each viewing, Kendra sat in her car and wrote copious descriptions about the apartment she’d just looked at in her notebook. Then she drove back to the Aquatic Center, noting how far it was and the time taken, before leaving for the next appointment. None of the places were nice. A few were in scary neighborhoods, and she immediately crossed them off her list. A couple were very dirty, but a few hours with hot water and a scrubbing brush would fix that, she hoped. Unfortunately the nicest ones were going to be a damn long bike ride and were too far away from work for her to skate. The commute was going to cut into her leisure time a lot. But of course she’d have her own bathroom and not need the one at work, and all that bike riding meant she likely wouldn’t need to use the work gym either. So, yeah, swings and roundabouts. It’d all even out and be doable, she thought.

  Kendra sat in Aquatic Center parking lot and chewed the end of her pen. She was trying to rate the apartments still not crossed off her list. Her final stop was a trailer park, and she knew it was another longish commute. After that she’d better take her car to a secondhand dealer and see how much she could get for it. She hadn’t managed to get any of the realtors to lower their bonds and didn’t have enough cash to pay for a bond without selling the car.

  Kendra sighed and dropped her notebook and pen into her purse then looked up to start her engine. Instead she gave a little scream. Osborne was standing in front of her car, his arms crossed, his legs spread wide apart, and a deep scowl on his face. She wound down her window. “What’s biting you? And can you please move out of the way. I’m due at the trailer park in twenty minutes.”

  “What trailer park? We’re coming, too,” said Osborne.

  “But—” She shook her head and opened the passenger door for Jordan who was leaning against it. She knew them both well enough to understand that there was no sense in wasting her breath arguing. Once Osborne decided something, nothing swayed him from his path. She twisted her arm backward and opened the rear door for him. “Get in then.”

  “What trailer park?” Osborne repeated.

  Kendra grinned. Yep, that was Osborne. Like a dog with a bone, and stubborn as a mule. Once he got on the track of something, nothing distracted him. “I’m spending today looking at apartments. The next one is in a trailer park off Highway Four.”

  “You’re leaving us?” Jordan sounded strange. Almost—hurt. Surely not. They must really be looking forward to her leaving and having their home back to themselves. Kendra flicked her eyes to Jordan, but he was looking straight ahead. She’d likely imagined the tone. Misunderstood.

  “That’s been the plan all along, to get my own place. I’ve seen a few that are doable.” Kendra refused to mention the horrendous amount of cleaning that would need to happen before she could use the bathroom or kitchen at the apartment that was number one on her list. But it was only three miles from the Aquatic Center, a distance she could easily skate or ride a bike, and realistically, she was going to have to sell her car to pay the bond. So lots of boiling water and a scrubbing brush were in her immediate future.

  “Why are you looking at a trailer all the way out here?” asked Osborne as they sped down Highway Four.

  “It’s affordable,” she replied.

  “You know, you don’t have to rush away from us. You could stay a few months until you’ve saved enough bond for a nice place,” said Jordan persuasively, apparently having guessed her reasons straight off, in that perceptive way he had.

  “No I can’t. I like working for you, and it’s totally inappropriate for an employee to be living with you as well.” As she said it, Kendra suddenly wondered if they’d terminate her employment. To them, it might seem like the obvious solution, but where would she ever get another job?

  She must have tensed up when she spoke because Osborne’s big hands massaged her shoulders gently. “It’s okay. I’m not going to sack the only person who’s ever managed to get the rosters sorted out so everyone is happy,” he said gently.

  “It’s easy. Anyone with half a brain could do that.”

  “How come no one before you managed it, then?” asked Jordan.

  Kendra grinned, feeling happier again, and turned onto the dirt road into the trailer park. Hmm. Dirt. That would make skating problematical. She’d have to buy a bicycle after all, although it’d be a hell of a ride each day from here. But if it was a lot nicer than the dirty apartment…

  The trailer was tiny, but quite clean, and it didn’t matter that there was no bathroom in it because she could shower at the Aquatic Center to avoid using the coin-in-the-slot showers at the trailer park. Hell, she’d need to shower by the time she’d ridden a bike that far each morning anyway! And if she washed her underwear at work, that’d save on laundry costs, too. As long as she could get more than five hundred dollars for her car, she was good to go.

  “I like it very much. I just need to check a few things, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow,” she told the realtor.

  They all climbed back into her car, Osborne in front this time. “I need to drop you back at the Aquatic Center. I’ve got a lot to do now,” she said.

  “Like what?” asked Osborne.

  Damn! She didn’t want to explain, but she knew him well enough to guess that he would badger her until she told him.

  “I need to see how much money I can get for my car so I can pay the bond. Then I have to buy a bike to ride to work. Would it be all right if I left most of my things at your place and took them to my new place a bit at a time?”

  “We can take them for you,” said Jordan.

  “You’re not leaving,” Osborne contradicted him.

  “Huh?”

  “Whatever the problem is, we’ll fix it. You’re not leaving. I—we—want you to stay with us,” said Osborne.

  “It’s not appropriate. I work for you, and I need that job.”

  “Fuck appropriate. I need you.”

  “We both need you,” added Jordan.

  Kendra pulled the car over to the curb and turned the engine off. She swiveled in her seat so she could see both of them at once. She took a deep breath and decided it was time to be brutally honest. “I really, really needed the job you gave me. I like it, and I can do it. I don’t want to lose it and have to start looking for another job all over again. For a start, I doubt I’d get one I like as much as this one, but even if I did, job hunting was damn hard work. If people find out I’m living with you as well as working for you, there’ll be all sorts of rude comments. Some of which would be true. I don’t want that. Not for me, not for what it may do to either of you or to your business.”

  Kendra was blushing. She hadn’t fucked her way into the job, but she hadn’t said no either.

  “I think you underestimate yourself. Every staff member knows you’ve aced the mess that was the roster system. We haven’t run out of any supplies since you started doing the orders. You may be sleeping with the bosses, but no one is going to deny that you are doing the job you were hired for way better than the last few receptionists we had,” said Jordan.

  “Do you like us?” asked Osborne.

  Kendra saw pain and hurt in his eyes. Or maybe she was imagining it. She’d thought Jordan sounded hurt before, but he was very pract
ical again now. Even so, she still answered honestly. It was the right thing to do. “Yes, I do like you both. Very much. I don’t go to bed with people on a whim. I’m not that sort of person.”

  “So stay with us. Please.”

  “No.”

  Osborne was about to argue, but Jordan cut across him. “No, Osborne, she wants to go, so she should go. But we can buy her car from her and loan it back to her so she can pay her bond.”

  “Well, I don’t like her living all the way out there in a trailer. What was your second choice for an apartment?”

  “It’s a bit dirty, but it’s very close to work, and I can clean it easily enough.”

  “Let’s go there now,” said Jordan.

  “I’ll have to ring the realtor back…”

  “Do it.”

  Kendra laughed at Osborne. He was coming over all bossy again. But she phoned the realtor, said she wanted a second look at the apartment, and agreed to meet him there in half an hour.

  Less than five minutes after they’d entered the apartment, Osborne was practically carrying Kendra out the door. “You are not living here.”

  Jordan turned and smiled at the realtor. “I’m sorry, she doesn’t want it after all,” he said, before jogging after Osborne and Kendra.

  Kendra punched Osborne’s arm. “Let me go, you big ape.”

  He slowed down a little, but as soon as they reached her car, he pushed her into the passenger seat and sat in the driver’s seat himself. “If you insist on being independent, I can live with that, but you have to be somewhere safe and clean. Jordan’s already said we’ll buy your car and loan it back to you—”

  “Not a loan. I’ll lease it back.”

  “Whatever. You’ll have the bond money, so let’s find somewhere more appropriate for you to live.” His heavy emphasis on “more appropriate” had her wondering again if she’d hurt his feelings. Surely he could see it wasn’t right for a lowly employee to live with the boss?

  * * * *

  Jordan heaved a sigh of relief as Kendra signed the lease to her new apartment. It was small, only two rooms really—the bedroom, with a tiny bathroom off it, and the living room, with a kitchen nook at one end. But it was clean and in a reasonable neighborhood about a ten-minute drive from the Aquatic Center. At first he’d thought Kendra was going to refuse to take it, as the rent was fifteen dollars a week more than she’d wanted to pay, but she’d finally seen the sense in living in a better neighborhood and not having to worry about kids on crack stealing her car or breaking into her home.

  “You’ll be getting more pay, too, if you continue to work Saturdays, as you’ll receive cash instead of it being in lieu of rent,” Jordan reminded her.

  “Saturdays really are busy,” Kendra replied hesitantly.

  “What, did you think us asking you to work then was just a ploy? Hell, haven’t you seen my desk lately?” asked Osborne.

  “Maybe I could come in and file some of those papers for you,” she joked.

  Jordan laughed. “She’s gotten you there. But if you do ever run out of things to do, it’s almost time for our annual stock-take, and you could start doing that.”

  “What do you stock-take?” asked Kendra.

  “Absolutely everything, from how many candy bars are in the kiosk, to how many pool noodles are in the class teachers’ trolleys,” sighed Osborne. “It’s a total nightmare, and the figures never add up.”

  They talked about it a bit more as they drove back home, and then Jordan was stunned when Kendra offered up the obvious solution. “It’d be much simpler to pay your staff to do the stock-take one night. The moment you close the pool, the staff stay on, for extra pay, and count stuff that’s continually used, like pool noodles, and toboggans, and candy bars. Things that stay in one place, like exercise bicycles, can be counted anytime, but anything that’s moved around a lot gets done at night.”

  All the breath left Jordan’s lungs at the blazing simplicity of her solution. “Dammit, you’re one smart woman. Why didn’t we ever think of that?”

  “Likely because we’re stupid,” said Osborne. But he was grinning, not scowling.

  “If you tell me what date you want it done, and give me your stock-take lists, I’ll set up zones and ask the staff for volunteers to work on it. You’ll need to tell me what you’re prepared to pay them, too, because it’ll mean changing the rosters. A person can’t work the early morning shift if they’ve just worked all night.”

  “It’ll be much faster if people are just counting stuff in tubs and on trolleys though. Not like when they’re trying to do it as people are teaching classes,” said Jordan.

  He leaned over and gently kissed Kendra’s lips. She tasted so nice. Sweet and soft and all woman. Suddenly his dick was harder than a spike, and all he could think of was fucking her again. They’d have to be a lot more intentional about making dates with her once she moved into her own apartment, but he understood her need to be independent. He’d guessed how self-reliant she was when she’d chosen to sleep in her car and keep looking for a job instead of finding some friend or relative to move in with.

  “How about we go out to dinner together tonight? You offered us a rain check, remember?” he asked.

  He saw the little crease between her brows, and then she smiled. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  “Where would you like to go?”asked Osborne.

  “I haven’t been to a restaurant in a while, but I like to try foods from different countries. How about you choose,” she said.

  “What, didn’t they ask you to secret shop at restaurants?” teased Jordan.

  “About twice I got to eat take-out as a secret shopper, but that was all.”

  “Would you like to try that African place?” interrupted Osborne.

  “The Safari Lounge? Where they have ostrich, and camel, and God-only-knows what else? Why not? Kendra, are you okay with that?”

  “African food? That sounds amazing.”

  Jordan heaved a silent sigh of relief. They’d wine her and dine her and fuck her brains out. Then surely she’d understand how much they wanted her in their bed for a long time to come.

  * * * *

  Osborne was rather surprised, but the restaurant had been a lot of fun. He’d looked on it as a sort of gentle lead-in to a night of fucking, foreplay almost, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that with Kendra, nothing was that simple. She’d delighted in the servers in their brightly colored clothes, the women with their hair tied up in turbans that matched their uniforms.

  Male servers came around to their table with platters of meat, asking if they’d like a slice of ostrich, or emu, or buffalo, or a dozen other animals, even zebra. At first, he wanted to try a slice of everything, but after a while he had to say no, as he was worried he’d have to loosen his belt a notch or two if he kept eating.

  The entire evening was one of the staff displaying their African culture and heritage, even to a group of male dancers in bright clothing and bare feet, who chanted, and stomped, and danced with boundless energy that had everyone in the restaurant clapping along with them.

  “That was wonderful. But I think I ate too much,” said Kendra as they arrived home.

  “Me, too. I can think of a good way to burn off some calories.” Osborne deliberately leered at her and watched her eyes sparkle as she grinned back at him. He loved the way she was always so ready to tease along with him and Jordan, yet she managed to achieve far more in a working day than any of her predecessors had done in years.

  Instantly Osborne understood that for too long he’d been a grumpy bear at work, not enjoying each day as he should. He really did need to lighten up a little. The Aquatic Center had been his dream. Now it was a reality he should be enjoying it, not burying himself in work to the extent where he was missing out on all the good things of life. He wondered what other tasks were bogging him down, where there was some simple solution, like with the stock-take. Kendra’s fresh, clear approach to work and life might be just wh
at he needed. But right now he wanted her body, her touch, her love.

  He stood in the bedroom doorway, pulling both her and Jordan into his arms, making sure he could see both their faces at once. “Kendra, how do you feel about both of us inside you at the same time?”

  Osborne realized he’d just crossed his big toes over his index toes. It was something he’d always done before an important swimming race. Just as he’d done back then, he forced himself to uncross his toes and wait for Kendra’s reply.

  He kept his attention on her, with just the briefest flick of his gaze to Jordan. Jordan’s lips were curled in a slight smile. All good there then.

  “You mean one of you in my pussy, and the other one in my ass? At the same time? Is that really possible?”

  “Hell, yes. It takes a special woman to do it, but I can guarantee you’ll have the best orgasm of your life,” he replied.

  Jordan dropped a kiss onto the top of her head. “We’ll understand if you don’t want to do it. We can have sex lots of other ways. But we’d really appreciate you giving it a go. Truly, it’s the most amazing experience ever.”

  “You’ve done it before?”

  “Not very often, but yes,” said Osborne.

  “It’s very intense sex. Truly outstanding. It takes a special woman, and we know that’s you,” added Jordan, reiterating and building on what Osborne had said.

  Osborne watched Kendra as her thoughts raced across her face, hinted at in a slight furrowing of her forehead, then a tiny lift of an eyebrow, and finally a smile. “All right,” she said.

  Osborne smiled, too, and realized he’d been holding his breath, so heaved some oxygen into his lungs.

  “Good,” he said and picked her up, carrying her into the bedroom and placing her on the bed. He loved holding her in his arms. She was all woman, rounded and soft. He despised women who deliberately starved themselves into parodies of famine victims. All bones and angles, and so fragile he was afraid to hold them tightly in case they broke. Overly muscled women didn’t appeal to him either. When he wanted hard walls of muscles, he preferred them on a man, accompanied by rougher, more animalistic sex. This was what truly made him happy—a hard man he loved, Jordan, and a soft woman he was fast coming to love as well, Kendra.