“Okay, fine. That I will do.”
“Good! Thank you. Hey, barbarian. You owe me an orgasm. She said yes.”
In the background, it sounded like Rusty said, “Dammit.”
“Why is he swearing?” Brooke asked.
Eliza giggled. “Oh, it’s a win-win for him. I told him if I could talk you into going tonight, he owed me a forced orgasm scene.”
She knew her friends were into BDSM. “I thought those were supposed to be fun.”
“Uh, his forced orgasm, not mine.” Another giggle.
“Ah.” She didn’t know how that worked, and in regards to her friends, wasn’t sure she wanted to.
She liked Rusty, but not like that.
“Get ready, honey,” Eliza said. “Casual. We’re on our way now.”
The call ended.
Brooke rubbed Dixon’s head. “Guess you’re eating alone tonight. Shall I leave the TV on for you and spare you the aggravation?”
He shoved his head against her hand, purring loudly in response.
Chapter Two
“You ready to go?” Cody called out.
“Yeah, in a minute.”
Cody blew out an aggravated breath. “Then you’re not ready,” he muttered low enough so even the eagle-eared Justin couldn’t hear him. He perched on the arm of the couch and tried not to be bitchy, but he’d had a day from hell and was looking forward to spending some time with their friends tonight.
This was the first time they’d gone out in nearly four weeks, besides work, grocery shopping, and home. The two of them had been involved in a massive construction project. Great for their bank accounts, but hell on their personal lives.
After eight years together, he thought they’d have this relationship stuff down pat, but somehow they always ended up in this same spot. Stuck in a rut—not one serious enough to implode them, fortunately—bickering and sniping at each other while they dug their way out of it.
Just to settle into another rut a few weeks later.
Hell, they were still renting. They had been talking about building a house on the piece of property they’d picked up six years earlier, yet hadn’t had the time or energy—or sometimes the money—to do anything else about it. Five acres in southern Manatee County, with lots of trees and lots of privacy.
Now the money wasn’t the issue, but the time and energy definitely were.
They’d also lapsed into a rut physically. Neither of them had the time or energy to seek out another play partner. Not that they’d had the time—or energy—to get out to Venture, anyway. Or go to the munches. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d logged onto FetLife.
Right now, they’d spent more time at work than anywhere.
Is this all there is?
He loved Justin. And now that Florida’s gay marriage ban had finally fallen courtesy of the courts, they could actually talk about getting married.
But…
What happened to us?
Maybe they needed to block out two weeks on their work schedules, take a vacation, and turn off their cell phones. Make the time to reconnect with each other instead of just falling into bed exhausted at the end of every day.
Hell, when was the last time they’d actually made love, and not simply mutually jerked each other off in the shower?
He couldn’t remember.
How sad is that?
Justin finally emerged from the bedroom. He looked handsome in casual khakis and a button-down, short-sleeved shirt that made Cody feel like a slob in comparison. He’d opted for jeans and a T-shirt. Justin’s short red hair was still damp from the shower, but looked styled nonetheless. And those green eyes of his always melted Cody’s cock in the good way.
“Ready?” Cody asked.
“Yep.”
Cody knew he couldn’t very well say hold on, let me change shirts, after he’d hassled Justin about being ready.
Justin stopped in the foyer and cocked his head at Cody. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Cody rose and fished his keys out of his pocket as he walked toward Justin.
“Are you okay?” Justin asked.
“I’m fine.” But he had to stop when Justin put out a hand and planted it in the middle of Cody’s chest. Cody was two inches shorter than Justin’s six two, and he didn’t want to have to look up into Justin’s eyes.
He knew his partner would spot the lie. Justin had a creepy sixth sense like that. Not creepy in the bad way, but preternaturally sensitive.
“That’s not an ‘I’m fine’ tone of voice,” Justin said. “What’s wrong?”
“The same thing that’s been wrong a lot lately,” Cody heard himself saying.
“Whoa.” Justin grabbed Cody’s shoulders, forcing him to remain right there. “Dude, talk to me.”
He finally looked up into Justin’s gaze. The concern he read there made him look away again. “We keep saying we’re not going to let ourselves get into a rut again, and we’re back in a rut again.”
Justin’s voice dropped. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s as much my fault as it is yours.”
“We’re a couple of workaholics.”
“Yeah.”
“How about this weekend we go to the club? We really need to start going on a regular basis again. And hitting the munches.”
Cody didn’t respond.
They were both Dominants. They’d discovered early on that sharing a male submissive didn’t work for them. Only took them three disasters and nearly ruining their relationship to figure that out.
But they could easily share a woman, either in bed or on a bench. She was happy, they were happy.
Unfortunately, it’d been nearly two years since their last bed partner had moved away because of her job. Since then, they had casually played at the club with others, but nothing that moved beyond the club doors into something more serious. Yes, they were gay, but they considered themselves pansexual rather than bisexual. It wasn’t the gender of a person, but the person themselves. With the right woman, there was nothing sexier to them than melting her to a puddle of goo under their hands and blowing her mind, leaving her begging for more.
But they had a rule that had saved their relationship—anyone they took to bed, it had to be a full commitment on both their parts. They had to both be into her to that extent. And she had to be monogamous to them for the duration of the relationship.
Which was okay, unless the woman thought she was going to get more than great scenes and even better sex from the men. They weren’t interested in being poly long-term.
Hell, they barely had time for each other, much less a third.
“Are you sure you want to go tonight?” Justin asked. “If you’d rather stay home, we can.”
“No, I want to go. I miss our friends.” The two of them topped each other on occasion, in private. They considered it more a sadomasochistic dynamic, because neither submitted to the other.
“Too bad Jackie’s met someone,” Justin said. “I’d suggest we fly out and visit her for two weeks.”
“Yeah. I’d already thought about that.” Jackie had met a nice Dom via a munch group in Seattle. She was now happily monogamous with him, although the three of them were still on friendly terms with each other, and her new boyfriend.
Justin released Cody’s hands, took the keys from him, and set them on the table in the entryway. Then he laced fingers with Cody and gently squeezed his hands.
“I love you, dude,” Justin said. “Nothing’s going to change that. I think the fact that after eight years we’re still going strong means something.”
“I love you, too. And yes, it does. I just hate when we get like this. I don’t want us to be in this position. I want us back.”
Justin leaned in and kissed him. “We won’t stay late tonight,” he said. “We’ll eat, chat, and come home and spend some time together. Quality time. How’s that sound?”
Cody finally smiled. “Sounds like a good plan.”
/>
* * * *
Justin had suspected for the past several days that Cody was stewing over something. He knew from experience it was better to wait to nail him about it, to let him stew a little. If Justin tried to pick and poke and prod too soon, Cody would clam up and deny anything was wrong.
Only after Cody’d had time to think on it for a while would he admit anything was bothering him.
Now that it was out in the open, they could work on it together. Yes, they had a bad pattern of slipping into a rut. This latest slump since Jackie had amicably ended their relationship when she’d had to move for work was, admittedly, the longest and darkest rut they’d settled into. Not that they were fighting or anything, but there was a disconnect, a chasm which had started as a little fissure, but that had slowly widened between them.
Justin hated it.
They worked together, they lived together, they loved together. They were partners in every way.
They worked for Sarton, a large construction firm. Cody was in charge of their electrical division, and Justin in charge of plumbing.
Their friends and coworkers Max and Sean were the ones who’d accidentally let slip their involvement in BDSM, and had introduced them to that circle of friends.
They could leave work at work, usually, and come home and not worry about it. Justin was glad they didn’t own their own business. That would be an additional level of stress on their relationship that might have broken them long before now.
Justin picked up the keys, then looked at them. “I thought we were going to take the truck tonight?”
Cody shrugged. “It doesn’t have air.”
“So? I love the truck.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Justin handed him the keys. “That’s why I parked off to the side, so you could back it out of the garage.”
“Oh.” His expression brightened. “I’ll get the keys.”
The 1969 Ford Fairlane Ranchero truck was Cody’s baby. It’d been his dad’s truck, then his uncle had owned it. Cody had bought it from his uncle several years earlier, and then spent two years restoring it. Rebuilt the engine and transmission, new interior, paint, bodywork—everything.
That was another thing they hadn’t done lately, made the local car show circuit.
Justin locked the front door and deadbolt, then walked down the hall to the door leading out to the garage and patiently waited while Cody grabbed the keys for the truck. When Cody returned, Justin opened the door and hit the button for the garage door opener.
“I’ll set the alarm,” he told Cody. “You get it backed out.”
Cody brushed a kiss across his lips and headed out, a smile on his face.
For that alone, suffering a non-air-conditioned car ride through a warm, humid Sarasota evening was worth seeing that smile again.
Something he hadn’t seen in far too long.
Something he’d really missed.
I need to try harder. For both of us.
The truck almost sounded like it didn’t want to start at first, but then again, it had probably been over a month since they’d last run it.
Then the V-8 caught and Cody let it idle for a moment before he backed it out into the driveway. Justin set the alarm and hurried out, hitting the button on his key fob to run the garage door down after he emerged.
When Justin got in and slipped his seatbelt on, he remembered another reason he loved riding in the truck.
A bench seat.
Not something you saw in modern cars.
They’d had some hot dates in this truck. Even went to a drive-in one night.
Yes, the modern conveniences were nice.
But you couldn’t beat a bench seat.
Cody smiled at him before backing out of the driveway. “Ready?”
Justin rolled down his window and opened the vent window. “Ready.” He reached over and laid a hand on Cody’s thigh, loving the feel of the warm denim under his palm.
And the hot, hard thigh beneath it.
Chapter Three
“Who, exactly, will be there tonight?” Brooke asked Eliza from the backseat. “Are these kinky friends, gaming friends, or what?”
“Yes,” Eliza said.
Brooke unsuccessfully resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her friend. “That’s not helpful.” She didn’t enjoy going into a situation like this where she didn’t have a handle on who was who. Or was that who was whom?
This is why I’m a mechanic, not a writer.
“Well, it’s a mix,” Eliza said. “Some of them overlap in one or more areas. Assume everyone’s non-kinky, even though some of them are. There’s some LARPers, some people from SCA, some of our D&D friends, and a couple of kinksters. And yes, some of them check the boxes in more than one column.”
“Again, not helpful.”
“If I told you who was kinky, you’d avoid them.”
Yes, I would. “No, I wouldn’t. I told you, I don’t have a problem with the kinky stuff. I had a problem with that one asshat that time who kept insisting I should play with him five minutes after we met when he didn’t even know if I was kinky or not.”
“Yeah, sorry about that guy. He was never invited back to any functions locally, as far as I’m aware.”
That had happened at a coffee time at a restaurant. Brooke and Eliza had been out shopping, and Eliza had talked Brooke into dropping by the event with her to grab dinner and meet some more of her friends.
What Brooke was pretty sure had been an attempt on Eliza’s part to introduce Brooke to more people and draw her out of her self-imposed hermitage had backfired on her friend when the guy practically glued himself to Brooke, despite her telling him several times no thanks, not interested.
Until she finally lost all patience with him and told him to go fuck himself.
“I think Derrick banned him from the club,” Rusty said. “That dude pissed off more than one person that night.”
“And Tilly was there,” Eliza said. “If someone comes off as a predator and she hears about it? That person might as well leave the area, because she will come down on them like a brick shit-house.”
“Why is everyone afraid of Tilly?” Brooke asked. “I like her. She’s very nice.”
Not only was Tilly nice, she was the funny kind of snarky. And as a former nurse, Tilly was one of the few people Brooke didn’t feel self-conscious talking to. Brooke had grown close to medical professionals during her recovery time, and even if not talking to them about medical matters, there was something comforting about knowing they had a vast well of knowledge under the surface.
Both Rusty and Eliza burst out into peals of raucous laughter. “You just haven’t seen her at her feistiest,” Eliza said. “And you’ve never been on the receiving end of her ire.”
“Lucky for you,” Rusty added.
“I’d be more afraid of you,” Brooke said to Eliza. “You scare me. Tilly doesn’t.”
“Try being married to her,” Rusty said. “You don’t know fear.”
Eliza playfully backhanded his shoulder. “You watch yourself, buster.”
He grinned. “What’s the fun in that?”
They pulled into the parking lot at the restaurant. They were just getting out of Rusty’s car when two cute guys in a gorgeous, dark blue ’69 Fairlane Ranchero pulled into the parking space two down from theirs.
As if drawn by a magnet, Brooke headed over toward them and their ride.
“Uh-oh,” she heard Rusty say from behind her. “We just lost her.”
“Relax,” Eliza said.
The driver had slightly shaggy black hair, smoky brown eyes, and stood around six feet tall. His snug T-shirt and jeans hinted at a nice body. His passenger was a redhead with green eyes, a couple of inches taller than the driver.
“Nice ride,” Brooke said, glad for any reason to delay her entry into the restaurant.
Who says I can’t meet guys?
“Thanks,” the driver said. “I put a lot of work into it.”
>
“Original?”
“Mostly. The upholstery and interior aren’t exact. But I didn’t mod it. I made some customizations, but nothing drastic. Mostly functional.”
“Can I look under the hood?”
The driver perked up. “Sure!” He started toward the front, but she was closer and found the latch immediately, popping it and raising the hood, the springs not even squeaking as she did.
“Wow,” he said, sounding impressed. “Even I usually have to look for the latch.”
She smiled. “I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home.”
Rusty let out a laugh, silenced by the sound of Eliza backhanding his shoulder.
The engine compartment looked as spotless as the exterior. “Nice detailing on the engine block,” Brooke said.
“I had the machine shop paint it original. I detailed the engine compartment while it was pulled.”
“Smart. Nice wiring job, too.” He’d used covers, stainless braid with blue fittings, which went nicely with the blue of the paint job. Aftermarket carburetor, K&N air filter, everything neat and tidy. It was obvious he took a lot of care with it.
“Thanks. I’m an electrician.”
Eliza leaned in. “No offense, sweetie, but I’m starving. You can sit and talk with Cody”—she pointed at the driver—“and Justin”—she pointed at Red—“during dinner.”
“Hi, Eliza,” the guys said in unison.
Dammit. “You know them?” Brooke asked Eliza, hoping they were LARPers or D&Ders, or SCAers.
Please, not kinky. Pleeease, not kinky.
“Yeah. Justin King and Cody Walker, this is our friend, Brooke Wallace.”
Justin’s face lit up in recognition. “Of Wallace Customs?”
“That’s me.” Sarasota wasn’t a huge city, but large enough that it still pleasantly surprised her when someone knew of her by reputation. She still had trouble sometimes remembering they were now talking about her reputation, and not necessarily about her father’s.