“We both love Sarah,” Alain choked out. “And she loves us, Ryan. Surely there must be an explanation. But it seems there isn’t one.”
Ryan shook his head and went to dress, asking Alain to clear away the food in the kitchen. He was certain that neither of them had an appetite, and Sarah was hardly going to eat it. When he returned to the living room, Alain had poured them both a drink. They sat to await her return home. They didn’t talk further, didn’t come up with a plan, just waited, their gaze on the door.
Chapter Three
Sarah Westlake bounced through the foyer of her building, waving to the security guard and chatting to another tenant as they boarded the elevator together. She’d had a long but productive day, and she was looking forward to having a relaxing tub and getting ready for an evening with Ryan and Alain. They were expecting to close a big deal today. They had been talking about it the previous evening, and she knew how important it was to them after losing at least two other deals to a rival. It had been a frustrating year for them, and while they assured her they were fine financially, she knew it was probably more about their egos. Hell, she would kick in her salary if it would help. She had money in the bank, not loads of it, but enough to help out. She had turned down an opportunity today, a chance to move to her design company’s office in Europe with a promotion and a raise. She couldn’t leave her men and wouldn’t tell them about the offer. That would feel like a threat to them, and they would put more pressure on her to resign and stay home. She wasn’t quitting her job. Tonight would be about long hours of pleasure. She was so ready to play, although she knew how sore she would probably be tomorrow.
Sarah put her key in the door and slipped inside. She saw the two loves of her life sitting in matching chairs facing the door. Sarah’s heart leapt with delight, and she began to smile then realized there was something very wrong. Their faces looked as though they were etched in stone, and something in their eyes actually frightened her. She dropped her briefcase and purse beside her and shrugged out of her coat, quickly moving toward them.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” she asked anxiously. “Did you lose the deal?” She couldn’t think of what else might have caused such rage in their faces.
Ryan looked her up and down lazily, his eyes dark. “We did, Sarah, funny you should ask.”
Sarah looked at him with misgivings. This was really strange. She turned to Alain, whose lips were twisted in a parody of a smile. He, too, raked her with his eyes and gestured to the laptop placed on the coffee table.
Sarah stared at it and back at them. “What?” she asked.
“We read the e-mails, honey,” Ryan responded. “We’d like you to explain.”
Sarah tossed her head, beginning to get pissed off. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Alain, his voice dark with pain and anger, said, “Read them yourself, little one.” His tone mocked the endearment, and Sarah flinched.
She snatched up the laptop and swiftly scanned through her e-mails. She felt the blood literally drain from her face, and her heart pounded. This wasn’t possible. She, too, read the time stamp, and she sucked air into lungs that felt shriveled and lifeless.
“I didn’t send these,” she stuttered. “There’s been a mistake.”
Ryan coiled himself out of the chair and moved to loom over her. He tugged the computer out of her hands, passing it to Alain, who now stood beside him.
“Doesn’t seem to be a mistake, Sarah, unless you count not deleting them,” he drawled quietly. “Now strip.”
Sarah backed up. “Stop it. I’m telling you I didn’t send that e-mail, and I don’t even know that name. Please.”
“Maybe you should convince us, little one,” Alain purred. “You heard Ryan. Strip.”
Sarah shook her head. She tried to hold their gazes but quailed before their angry resolve. She thought about running, but she had never backed down from a challenge in her life. Yet for the first time she was a little afraid. She couldn’t think straight, didn’t know how to convince them. Her hands went to the buttons on her dress, fumbling to undo them. She pushed it off her shoulders, and it drifted down her body to pool around her feet. She stood there in her pale-blue teddy, and their eyes devoured her but apparently with lust only. There didn’t seem to be any tenderness or love. She shut her eyes against them. This wasn’t happening.
“If you do not want me to destroy that lovely piece of lace, Sarah, remove it. Now.” Alain’s voice was flat and commanding.
She took the teddy off with trembling hands and sank to her knees before them, head bowed, praying for the words that would make this nightmare go away. Ryan took the clip from her hair, and it streamed down around her.
Alain pulled her up, his hand at her elbow, one fisted in her hair. His mouth came down over hers in a punishing, savage kiss, bruising her lips and stealing her breath. Ryan then pulled her to him and dealt her a similar assault. She tasted the two of them and wanted to weep. Together they half dragged, half carried her to the master bedroom where the linens were turned down, candles burned, and for a moment she hoped it was all a stupid prank. The room was set for seduction, not punishment. When they strapped, paddled, or flogged her for punishment, even denied her orgasm, all the lights were on so every response could be noted and learned. This felt different.
Ryan grunted and flipped on the overhead light, and Sarah’s heart sank. She had been punished for not letting them know where she was or forgetting to call, for worrying them, but that was rare. Alain loved to spank or flog her for imagined or tiny infractions, and Ryan participated wholeheartedly, but that was erotic pain and ended in ultimate pleasures for them all. This was going to be different, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She was afraid to use her safe word; she had never used it in all this time, and this time she believed they wouldn’t just stop but would walk away from her forever. If she had to endure whatever they meted out tonight, regardless of her innocence, then she would endure. And then they would find out the truth, and she would make them pay. She would do this for the relationship and her love for them. They seemed to need this very badly.
Alain centered her on the bed on her left side and sheathed himself. He looked at her in an almost dispassionate manner if one could overlook the seething emotion in his eyes. She heard the crinkle of foil behind her and realized Ryan was also donning a condom. She didn’t like taking oral contraceptives, believed they were unhealthy, and so her men used condoms except on the days that she thought were absolutely safe to have intercourse and avoid pregnancy. They had talked about children in the future, but there seemed to be lots of time.
Sarah felt the lube at her anus. It was cold, so unlike Ryan not to warm it first between his hands, and she shivered, but not from the chill. This was not going to go well for her. His fingers pushed in, lubricating and stretching her, but with less of the care and intimacy she had always experienced. Regardless, her vagina responded and filled with moisture. Alain reached down and pushed a finger up her and smiled.
“She’s wet, Ryan,” he snarked.
Ryan just grunted, adding another finger and scissoring them, but was gentle against her flinch.
Sarah opened her mouth to protest, and Alain removed the finger from her pussy and held it against her lips. “Say nothing,” he advised, “or I’ll gag you.”
“Gag her anyway,” Ryan said. “I’m not in the mood to hear any noise she makes until we’re done.”
Alain knelt by her head, his cock huge and hard. He ignored how it bounced against her face, reaching to secure a velvet rope to the restraint on the other post and loop it through the one on the post closest to him. He tied both of her wrists to the end, effectively restricting her movements. Her arousal grew, against her better judgment. Sarah was so attuned to them that all they had to do was look at her and her pussy got wet. She willingly opened her mouth for the ball gag he pushed against her lips and winced when he tied it tightly, snagging her hair. Sarah clung to the hope that
they would come to their senses. This nightmare couldn’t be happening. She knew their intense reaction came from the thought that she had betrayed them because she really didn’t love them after all. That she had used their love for her against them. Stupid male ego. Fragile male pride.
Ryan settled behind her and pressed his cock against her anus. With few preliminaries, he surged through the tight ring of muscle, taking her breath away, causing her to gasp out against the gag. He seated himself as deeply as he could, and then lifted her leg high, so her thighs were well apart, and Alain slid into position. He thrust into her vagina, her juices lubricating his entry. While Sarah realized that they had effectively reduced her to a fuck toy, gagged, unable to protest or share her responses with them, it still felt so good. Their domination of her sexually was what she craved and needed. She closed her eyes and went with it.
They thrust into her with their usual rhythm, although there wasn’t quite the same interest in her comfort or pleasure. She could feel their pain and anger. She jerked between them, feeling the fullness that alone sometimes brought release, and felt the beginning coil of her orgasm. For the most part, Ryan and Alain were silent, not sharing their passion, certainly not expressing their enjoyment with her, not encouraging and praising her. They came nearly at the same time, and it felt joyless. And she had not found her own release. They pulled out immediately and rolled away, leaving the bed, never looking at her. She heard a shower start at the same time as her tears did, but a core of rage and resentment pushed the tears back.
Sarah squirmed up the bed and struggled to free her hands, although it was easier now that there was no tension on the rope. She absently rubbed the red, chafed marks, knowing that they wouldn’t last long, and undid the gag, dropping it to the floor as she scrambled off the bed. Sarah then reached for the gold chain around her neck and yanked as hard as she could, ignoring the dragging pain. She knew she would have a mark on her neck to remind her of this night, but of her own making. She didn’t want to think about the harm done to her heart. A weaker link snapped, and she threw the collar away from her, hearing it tinkle as it hit the wall. She moved quickly into the living room and found her dress and pulled it on, forsaking the teddy, but gathered up her coat, briefcase, and purse. She toed into her shoes and let herself quietly out the door. Sarah ran down the hallway to the elevator, blessing its early response. The floors seemed to pass with an interminable slowness, but she was finally in the lobby and out the door past the startled doorman, fleeing for her sanity down the sidewalk.
* * * *
Ryan emerged from the shower down the hall and strolled to the bedroom, pushing away the guilty thoughts that had begun under the spray of water. He wasn’t finished with Sarah, but he thought they would talk with her and find out why she had done what she had. He smiled darkly. Alain would torture the truth out her, and she would love it. He wondered how many delayed orgasms it would take to get her to tell them. Somehow they had to get to a place where they could work this out… Despite his ambivalence about her apparent betrayal, Ryan couldn’t deny that he still loved her, certainly still wanted her, and he believed Alain felt the same. Alain was already in the bedroom, holding something shiny in his hands, staring at it, his shoulders slumped. He turned at Ryan’s approach and held out Sarah’s heavy, gold chain that served as their collar.
“She must have pulled it right off her neck, Ryan,” he muttered. “A link has actually snapped. If she needed money, then why would she leave such an expensive piece of jewelry behind?”
“Christ, I don’t know.” Ryan actually felt something cold grasp his heart. He took a deep breath to calm himself.
“What have we done to her, Alain? I thought maybe the sex would make me feel better, but I feel shitty.”
“I don’t know. I think we missed something here. She honored our collar. She honored us, and I know women,” continued Alain. “She didn’t use her safe word or signal us, and we weren’t kind, Rye. Not kind at all. I can’t believe she would allow us to do that just to try and convince us of her innocence. Not our Sarah. I think she did this to show that she loved us, to reassure us. She knows us better than we know ourselves.” Clearly Alain was thinking more clearly, unburdened by the earlier rage.
Ryan pushed away the guilt and shame that arose again, the same feelings he had wrestled with in the shower. Sarah hadn’t said no, hadn’t used her safe word when she knew what they were going to do, but he knew what they had done had been emotionally disconnected. And so did Alain. Better they had met her at the door and thrown her out than take it out on her like that. And he had planned, with Alain, to continue to deal with her sexually. They had thought they could then move on, keeping her as their love, just ignoring what had happened. Maybe that was it, but they should not have done what they did.
Alain looked at him with pain-filled eyes. “We made a mistake, Ryan, and not just in how we treated Sarah just now, although I will never forgive myself for that, but I can’t make myself believe she would sell us out. It isn’t in her nature, and she has never wanted material things or money.”
Ryan sat on the bed and contemplated his friend. “Okay. Let’s get the laptop down to our captive hacker and see if that tells us anything.” He stopped, not wanting to make any more excuses. He cursed his pride.
They quickly dressed and called for the car. Alain picked up the abandoned teddy on his way out and tenderly folded it, pushing it into his coat pocket. “She left without any underwear, Rye,” he said. “How frightened and upset she must have been.”
Ryan kept his own counsel. It was too much to contemplate.
Chapter Four
“Somebody changed the time stamp,” their expert advised within a moment of accessing the hard drive. “Not the easiest thing to do, but not insurmountable for anyone with lots of experience and skill.”
Ryan sagged against the desk, and Alain audibly groaned. Sarah. They had just terribly hurt the woman they loved. The future loomed bleak and empty.
“How did someone get into the apartment to do it?” asked Ryan of Alain.
Alain shrugged. “Maybe someone accessed her other laptop at work. That would make more sense.”
“Maybe, but let’s check the security footage at the condo.”
A couple of hours later, Alain pointed to footage of the tall man in the elevator pulling off what looked like latex gloves behind his back. That could only mean one thing, and they tracked his movements back to their home. Sure enough he hesitated at the door a trifle too long to be using a key, and when he went inside, the security in the lobby confirmed that no alarm had been signaled. No one had the code to their condo but themselves and Sarah, although she constantly forgot it every time it was rotated and had to call them in order to get inside. Could Sarah have given him the code? But how did that make sense?
Ryan froze. Sarah usually called him or Alain at the office on their landlines so as not to disturb them in meetings by calling their cells. It was another example of how thoughtful she was. Their PA had put those calls through, and Ryan knew that on occasion he’d told Jane the code to share with Sarah when he was rushing somewhere or her cell had lost its signal and she would have to call back and might miss him. The interesting little scene with Jane this morning made sense now. However, after jumping to such wrong conclusions with Sarah, he didn’t want to make another mistake, so he consulted with Alain. Together, they arranged for security to conduct another updated background check and put a discreet tail on her. In the meantime, they had a woman to find and grovel before.
* * * *
Sarah found herself in a coffee shop several blocks from her home. Well, it really wasn’t her home anymore. She ordered a large, sweetened breakfast roast and laced it with cream, and she found a table to sit at, tucked away in the back. She thought she might be in shock or something as things were kind of wispy around the edges, so she used the coffee as a tonic. Slowly the world came back into focus. Her bottom and pussy ached, she was sore in what
should have been a good way but wasn’t, and she became aware that she was nude under her dress and coat. The memories of the hard manner in which Ryan and Alain had used her flooded her brain, and she thought she might vomit. Worst of all, she didn’t hate them for it. She missed them already.
She told herself to stop thinking about them and focus on what she had to do next. Sarah opened up her work laptop and synced her e-mail. Sure enough, right there for the entire world to see were the two incriminating e-mails setting her up as a spy and a traitor. Not a well-paid one, she sneered to herself, for there would never be any money for what she hadn’t done. Fuck them. Fuck them both. While she could see how incriminating the evidence was, even in court a person was innocent until proven guilty. She had been charged, convicted, sentenced, and punished without being allowed to defend herself. And by two men who purported to love her. Well, they sure as shit didn’t trust her. The tears came then, overpowering the anger, tears of grief and loss and pain. Sarah sobbed into her hands, totally unaware of her surroundings. She had no idea how much time had passed when she felt a tentative tap on her shoulder. She looked up to blearily see a young waitress standing there, holding out a sheaf of napkins.
“Your heart’s broken, ma’am,” the woman said. “He ain’t worth it, don’t you know?” She spoke with wisdom and experience that belied her years. “Mop up now, ma’am, and move on. You’ll heal.”
The truth and kindness of the waitress’s statement grounded Sarah. She gratefully took the napkins and wiped her face clean, taking deep, cleansing breaths as she did so. She smiled at Lonny, or so her nametag read, and shoved herself upright.
“Thanks, I’m moving on right now,” she said.
She flagged a cab and gave the driver directions to George’s house, hoping he would be home. She had a key, regardless, but needed a shoulder right then. She and George went way back. He flitted from romance to romance in college, having his heart broken regularly, and his latest paramour had gone back to his wife. They would make a fine, commiserating pair, until she found her own place. Besides, she wasn’t feeling at all well, and the world had gone back to having those blurry edges.
Young, Allyson - Forgiveness (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) Page 2