“Aww,” they echoed in unison, sounding very disappointed.
Un. Be. Lievable.
“And someone owes me for a thing of catnip!” She slammed the bedroom door shut behind her, barely resisting the urge to lock it. It was their bedroom, too.
Stripping and dropping her clothes onto the bathroom floor, she got into the shower and stood there letting the hot, steamy spray sluice the grime and sweat and stink of the day off her.
Maybe she was overreacting. No, they hadn’t hurt Baxter. She knew some people dressed their cats up, but they had to be worse masochists than she was to brave pissing their pets off. A dog, maybe.
A cat?
She wasn’t that brave.
And I was worried about Max and Baxter getting along.
The more she thought about it, the guiltier she felt for yelling at them.
It also started to sink in what they’d said about the web hits.
Leaving the water running, she grabbed a towel and raced toward the office.
“How many hits and orders did you say it got?”
They’d untied Baxter, but he was now rolling around on the floor again. The men were huddled in front of the computer.
“A lot,” Sean said. “Take a look.”
They parted so she could look at the stats report, which was displayed on the screen.
Their numbers hadn’t just jumped, they’d been launched into orbit.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Max said. “We’ve had fourteen orders, six of those for custom stuff, in the past hour alone since we posted it.”
Her eyes widened. “No. Way.”
“Yeah, way.”
She understood what this meant. It was a way for the men to realize their dream, to finally get their business off the ground. What they’d worked so hard for, and she’d bought into emotionally with them, wanting their success, too.
She stared at Baxter.
“Maow.”
“You can’t use pink,” she finally said, turning to head back to the bathroom. “They’ll think he’s a girl. Use blue or green or something. He’s got his dignity, you know.”
* * * *
Cali thought Essie was going to laugh herself into wetting her pants. Cali sat and waited for her friend to get it out of her system. After her shower, Cali had thrown on shorts and a T-shirt and walked down to Essie’s house. Now they were sitting on the lanai, sipping chilled wine and snacking on hummus and crackers.
“Anytime you’d like to return to sanity land,” Cali said.
“I…cannot…stand…it…hysterical!”
“Okay, ha-ha, but is it ethical?”
Essie snorted again. “You’re asking me if it’s ethical to let them do shibari on Baxter?”
“I’m serious. You’re a vet tech.”
“I’m not a constitutional lawyer. Not like they were molesting him or something. They have a point. People dress their animals up all the time. Could he move around?”
She sat back. “Yeah. He was rolling around on the floor in a catnip high when I got home.”
That set Essie off again on another laughing tear. “Seriously, I have got to see those pictures,” she said.
“I don’t want people thinking we’re abusing Baxter. I don’t need PETA jumping down our throats or something. We’re poly kinksters, and they’re bi. That’s enough of an image problem to start with.”
“There are always going to be people who bitch about something,” Essie said. “What I want to see is the gimp suit they put on him.”
“You, my friend, are an enabler.” Cali sipped her wine.
“Ethically, I don’t have a problem with it. If they were restraining him, or suspending him, sure, that would be wrong. But they’re right. It’s a costume. It’s funny. It’s free advertising, and seriously? I bet when they get the gimp suit ready that you’ll have dozens of e-mails from people wanting to order them for their dogs and cats. That could be a whole ’nother business for them right there. Kinky corsets for dogs and cats. Pamper your pussy.”
Essie burst out laughing again. “Fetish up your four-legged friend. Oooh, there you go. Matching human and pet collars.”
“I came to you as the voice of reason, and I’m getting atrocious puns.”
“And not half-bad ideas.”
“They’re not half-good, either.”
Essie dredged a cracker through the hummus. “What you should do,” she said, “is have Max tie Baxter and Sean in matching ties, same rope and everything, and have Sean match his cat poses and take pics of them together.”
Cali drained the rest of her wine and stood. “Enabler.”
“Tell me it’s not funny?”
She headed inside. “I’m going home now.”
“I want copies of the pictures,” Essie called after her. “Or at least invite me over to watch, dammit!”
* * * *
Cali was doubting herself when she walked into the office.
Except Max turned around, glee on his face. “Four more orders since you left!”
She stared from him to Sean and back again.
On the floor, Baxter lay happily purring away in a catnip daze.
“I am not proud of myself for what I’m about to say, but I blame it on the wine and Essie.” She told them the idea, the men’s smiles growing wider as she did.
“Do we have any matching paracord and rope?” Max asked him.
“Besides pink? Yeah, I’m pretty sure we do.”
“Go look.”
Sean raced out the door, presumably heading for the garage.
“If we get people coming after us with pitchforks and torches,” she told Max, “I’m blaming you.”
“We’ll take the blame.” He stood and walked over, a smile on his face. “How about we make Baxter a Dom outfit? Leather vest and everything. He can lay there with a paw on a leash hooked to Sean’s collar, with Sean tied up in front of him.”
“Please don’t let this get you two fired. We can’t pay the bills on my income alone, you know.”
“We won’t.”
Baxter opened his eyes and stared up at her. “Maow.”
Chapter Fourteen
“So what’s this I hear about you guys posting pussy bondage porn on your website?” Abbey asked at dinner Saturday night.
Tilly had been taking a drink of water. It sprayed across her plate as she started choking. Landry smacked her on the back while Cris handed her a napkin.
“Excuse me?” Tilly finally managed. “A little context, please.”
By the time Max and Sean got finished explaining—and showing everyone the pics, which both men had on their phones—the rest of the table was roaring with laughter.
“See?” Essie told Cali. “It’s great.”
“I know.” Cali knew it, because they’d had another seventy orders roll in the past week, which the men had spent several hours every night, with her help, packing and getting ready to ship. They would have to start making more implements next week if the current rate of orders kept up.
Baxter was even getting e-mail of his own. Cali wasn’t sure if it was disturbing or cute that people were having their pets e-mail as well.
As long as they kept ordering implements, she wouldn’t question it. The men were happy that, finally, it seemed their side business was taking off.
When they reached the club, they couldn’t start playing because several people came up to them to talk about ordering implements. They had to go out to the lobby so they could process the orders through Cali’s phone for customers, swiping their credit cards via a reader she’d had the foresight to order for them to make in-person sales easier. At one point, Cali noticed Lydia walk in, but she and the guys were too busy to pay her any attention and the woman quickly fell from Cali’s notice.
It was after ten o’clock when they finally got free to stake out a spanking bench to use after it was cleared by the people currently playing on it. She didn’t se
e Lydia anywhere and figured she must have already come and gone.
Fine by her.
Cali was more than ready for play, sensing her men’s energy was up and bouncy. The success of the website had rejuvenated them in some ways. They were making plans for the future, including Cali in them as if they assumed she would always be there. The even seemed to take great pride in teaching her how to make stuff, wanting her input on every aspect, relying on her decisions.
A vast difference, she belatedly realized, from Shane. Only in retrospect had she realized he’d never made long-term plans with her. Just some vague possibilities, although he’d been happy to accept her hard work.
She wondered how long he’d been planning on leaving her behind, or if it was just circumstances.
It didn’t matter. She had a place in the universe now. She felt wanted and loved, and they looked to her as a partner, not an employee.
The difference was black and white.
And the past week had proven that to her.
In her mind, she’d pretty much given up thinking about the six-month mark.
After a wonderful scene that left Cali sore in all the good ways, they headed home, the men eagerly discussing the TCBT sales they’d made that night, and how they needed to schedule their time in the workshop to replenish their inventory.
They apparently thought Cali had fallen asleep in the back, because after a moment’s lull in the conversation, Sean muttered, “I’d love to rub that stupid bitch’s face in it for what she put us through back then.”
“Shh,” Max said. “I don’t want to talk about her. She’s the past. We have Cali, we’re happy, we have a great future. Leave the past alone.”
Cali, however, with her curiosity piqued, wanted to know the story once and for all. When they’d reached their bedroom, she plopped down in the middle of the bed and stared at them.
“I want to hear the story of how you two ended up together. And your ex.”
“Why?” Max asked.
“Because I want to know. You know about my past. I want to hear about yours.”
“I don’t like talking about…her.”
“I get that.”
Sean slumped onto the mattress. “Let’s just get it over with, huh?” he said to Max.
“Obviously there’s a happy ending here,” she said. “You guys are together, we are together. At least the basics, okay?”
Max started getting undressed. “She was older than us by fifteen years,” he started. “We were still very new to the BDSM lifestyle. We were roommates, had just rented a house together, worked together. We met her at Venture.”
Sean picked up the thread. “She convinced us she could teach us to be better Dominants if we submitted to her. I’ll admit the thought of a woman controlling me sexually was a turn-on in some ways. I was willing to give it a shot. She ended up dating both of us. No secret about it. She was good in bed. Funny, smart, articulate. And we did learn a lot.”
Max dumped his clothes in the bathroom and returned to sit on the bed. “She was good. Shibari, impact play. Everything she said made sense in context at the time. Everything she did.”
“She said,” Sean added, “that the best Dominants started as submissives. That if we wanted female submissives of our own, we needed to understand their needs, their desires.”
“Their bodies,” Max said.
She didn’t like the hollow tone in his voice.
Sean continued. “She ended up moving in with us. At some point, she got us so wrapped around her fingers, we would have done anything for her. We were young and stupid and we had work, and we had her. We didn’t see what she was doing at the time.”
“One of her kinks,” Max quietly said, “was humiliation. She trained us to wear butt plugs and chastity cages and cater to her every sexual whim. Taught us to love pegging. Said since we enjoyed it so much, it must mean we had a bi streak in us.”
Cali felt an ugly air creep into their memories.
Sean looked down at his hands, which were clasped together in his lap. “She demanded more and more from us until one night she declared that if we really were serious, we needed to prove it. A test of our loyalty to her.” He looked at her. There was an old pain in his eyes. “She had us give her a show. Suck each other’s cocks sixty-nine, until we made each other come. Both of us wearing butt plugs.”
“From that moment on,” Max said, “she rode us. Literally. One of us fucking her, while that one got fucked by the other. Or she’d lock us up for days in chastity and only let us come if we blew or fucked each other. Sometimes make one of us go down on her while the other got fucked. Or she’d peg one of us while the other blew him. She inextricably tied our orgasms to each other. As Tony and the others can tell you, it doesn’t take long to start rewiring a brain with pain and pleasure.”
“It was hot,” Sean admitted. “She’d be all giggly and loving after it, the reward for it, pleasing her. Until we got to the point that we really began to enjoy it. We didn’t need her to force us to do it. We liked it. We’d gotten comfortable with each other.”
“That’s when she started turning us against each other,” Max said. “She quit contributing to the household finances, started acting like a queen and not in a fun way. Didn’t help around the house at all. The two of us started having problems between each other, resentful because she’d pick one of us to spend the night with her and not both of us.”
“When the two of us finally sat down and compared notes,” Sean said, “we realized what was going on. We started working together, watching what she did, and realized how stupid we were for falling for it.”
“We told her it was over,” Max said, “got her moved out, and agreed never to let someone come between us like that again. That was ten years ago.”
“What about me?” she quietly asked.
Max looked confused. “What about you, baby?”
“Am I coming between you?”
“No,” they said in unison, closing in to wrap their arms around her.
“Baby, you’ve brought us closer together,” Sean said. “You are nothing like her. You’re honest and open and caring. You are not a mooch. She wasn’t just a mooch, she was an emotional vampire. Some people are just like that, not happy unless they’re sucking the joy out of everyone else.”
“You,” Max said, “have made us happy in a way we never knew was lacking before we met you. Don’t get me wrong, Sean and I love each other and what we went through with…her, well, that brought us together in a way we never would have before. So for that, we’ll always thank her. But she did it for her own selfish, narcissistic reasons, not because she wanted what was best for us.”
“Toward the end,” Sean said, “when we decided to confront her, see if she’d change, give her one last chance, she threatened to out us to our boss. So the day before we got her out of our place, we went in to our boss and told him we were a couple. He assumed we were gay and he didn’t care. But we told him a woman had threatened to out us. His son was gay.”
“Needless to say,” Max said, “when she did call him, he told her what he thought of her and hung up on her.”
“That was the final straw,” Sean said.
Max nodded. “We told her when we moved her out that if she dared cause trouble for us, we would spread it around that she’d tried to out us. Which would have gotten her pretty much blackballed locally. She left us alone after that, and we picked up and continued on with our lives. Sadder and wiser, because we had loved her at one point. There was that to deal with, that we’d both been taken in by her. We’d believed her lies at the start and fell for them completely.”
Sean leaned in and kissed her. “That’s why we got what you went through with Shane. We didn’t have the same situation, but we were used by her the way you were used by him. Not as long, thank god. We were with her less than a year. But it was a year that changed our lives forever. And in the end, the good lasted. I don’t know if I could ever be with another man the
way I am with Max.”
“Me, either,” Max said, clasping her hand. “That’s why we decided the next woman we allowed into our lives, she’d have to be very special. A good-hearted person, full of healthy love, with an open heart and an open mind. She’d have to want both of us equally, not just one of us.”
“And that woman is you,” Sean said. “You are so amazing and you don’t even see yourself the way we do. I’m not glad you went through what you went through with Shane, but I’m glad he was stupid enough to let you go and that you found your way to us.”
“Me, too,” Max said. “And as long as you want us in your life, we want to be right there in it. We know we said six months in the beginning and we’re not trying to rush or pressure you, but we’re fine with how things are between us now, and if you want to stay forever, we’ll be happy to have you here with us forever. But I don’t like thinking or talking about…her. It’s ancient history, she has no hold on us, and we chose to get our revenge by living well. Which we have.”
Cali felt badly that she’d dredged up their painful past, but with her questions answered, she now understood what a miracle this whole situation was. “So you won’t mind if I peg you guys? That won’t bring back bad memories?”
Max smiled, leaning in to kiss her. “No, because you’ll be doing it out of a spirit of fun, of love. And we have faith in you that you won’t violate our trust the way she did. We know you’d be doing it so we have fun, too, not just to get your own jollies.”
“What about topping you guys? You said you wouldn’t mind that.”
“Same thing,” Sean said. “Because it’s a mutual power exchange. With…her, the exchange was one-sided. She took and took and took. Only looking back toward the end could we see that she never gave anything unless it suited her.”
“And let’s face it,” Max said with a smile. “Sometimes, it’s just damn fun to break out the stunt cock.”
Chapter Fifteen
The next day, Cali awoke before the men, who’d kept her up late after their discussion with a vigorous round of fucking that had scrambled her brain in the good kinds of ways.