Read Crafty Bastards Page 7


  “Fuck, baby. I’m going to last a lot longer this time, able to enjoy you.”

  His technique was different, slow, grinding strokes that rubbed against her ass and reminded her she’d already had not only the best beating and orgasms of her life, but she was now having the best sex of her life.

  If she’d died in the apartment fire and was now in heaven, she was good with that.

  Sean’s oral technique was also different than Max’s. Sean pulled another orgasm from her while Max patiently waited her out, holding his own climax back until she’d come and he could let go. He pounded his cock into her, hard, fast, and it only kept her own release rolling through her until he finally emptied his balls inside her.

  After Max pulled out, Sean’s eager mouth wouldn’t stop, licking Max and her clean. When she tried to get up, Max kept her pinned in place, his hands covering hers, his body holding her down.

  “Safeword or take it, baby,” Max said, his dominant tone triggering another orgasm in her. “Don’t you dare stop, Sean.” Max’s body pressed against hers. “Show her how talented you are with that mouth.”

  Sean did, too, leaving her sobbing from another hard orgasm before Max finally got off her and let her collapse onto her side. Sean rolled with her.

  Max reached over to Sean’s cock. “We’ll take pity on you,” he teased. “Open up.” He grabbed Sean’s cock, fisting it as Sean fucked his hand, Sean’s cum exploding into her open mouth seconds later.

  Max grabbed her by the chin, tongue fucking her mouth as he kissed her.

  “And that,” he hoarsely said, “is how you start an evening right.”

  Chapter Ten

  They each fucked her once more, and got her off several more times with the help of the nail driver, before they finally collapsed into an exhausted pile on the men’s bed.

  Saturday morning, Cali awoke to find Sean half draped over her on one side, but Max wasn’t in bed. She smelled coffee brewing. When she went in search of Max, she found him on the computer in the office, looking frustrated.

  Sinking down into the other chair, she leaned in for a kiss. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He had what looked like a server stats page up for their website for their Two Crafty Bastards Toys online store. “Three web hits in twenty-four hours,” he said. “That’s what’s wrong.”

  “Let me get some coffee into me and we’ll sit down and look at the website. I’m sorry I was busy this week and didn’t get to discuss it with you. My original intent had been to sit down with you last night.”

  A playful smile quirked his lips. “Yeah, well, we sort of distracted you.”

  “True. I blame you and Stud Muffin in there. He always sleep late on Saturdays?”

  “When he can, yeah. He’s not a morning person.”

  She got her coffee, fed Baxter and scooped his litter pan, then rejoined Max in the office. While in the past she’d glanced at their site, she’d never really paid attention to it with a professional eye.

  “We need to redo your logo, for starters,” she said. “Correction, we need to make you a real logo. Who made that monstrosity?”

  “Sean did.”

  “What did he use, Microsoft Paint?”

  “Yeah. It’s about four years old.”

  “It looks like a four-year-old did it. A drunk one.” She reached over and took control of his wireless mouse, paging through the site. “We need to update the product pictures, too. Those are horrible. No offense.”

  “None taken. We need honesty.”

  “You’ll get it in spades. The layout’s wrong, too. It’s not intuitive…”

  By the time Sean woke up an hour later and stumbled into the office for a good-morning kiss, Cali had a list nearly a full legal pad long of what was wrong with the site.

  “I set up a secure website for our regular lawn customers to pay with,” she said. “I can do one for you, too. The way you have it set up now, it makes them not want to buy. And we need to improve your presence on social media, as well as on FetLife. That’s a huge, ready-made customer base right there.”

  “Well, we’ve got a garage full of inventory that’s not selling online,” Max said. “But people tell us at conventions we’ve worked that they love our stuff. They’ll buy from us in person. Hell, we’ve sold out of inventory several times at cons. And the stuff that they stock at Venture. Nearly every week they e-mail us asking to bring in more. If we can translate that into online purchases, we could really make a go of it and turn it into more than just a hobby.”

  Sean had returned with his coffee, and while his hair stuck up at weird angles, he looked a little more awake now. “Don’t get us wrong, we’re not about to quit our day jobs,” Sean said, “but we love making stuff and love seeing it used. Our goal is to get to a point that when we are eventually ready to retire, this is a viable business we can run full-time to make a profit and pay our bills without us having to tap into our savings.”

  “Then that’s what we need to show people,” she said. “This, the quality of this website hurts you. It looks childish and crappy. People will think that’s the way your toys are made. You need a slick, easy-to-buy-from website that reflects your products and craftsmanship.”

  “Can you do it?” Sean asked.

  “Well, yeah. It’ll take me a while. A couple of weeks. And we have to reshoot all the inventory. You might need to talk to Kel about that.”

  “We’ve already got a new set of lights and a backdrop for it. We just weren’t sure how to go about redoing everything.”

  “Will you give me complete creative control over it?” She already had several ideas churning, but she wanted to visit similar sites to see the good and the bad and decide exactly how to proceed next.

  The men exchanged a glance before looking at her. They both nodded. “Yes,” they said in unison.

  “We trust you completely,” Max said.

  That filled her with warm fuzzies.

  It also scared her. She didn’t want to fall in love with them. Not this soon, anyway.

  Not until she was sure there wasn’t another shoe hidden somewhere that would drop and stomp her heart to pieces.

  “Okay, then. Someone please make me breakfast and I’ll start laying the groundwork.” The men kissed her before heading off to the kitchen.

  She sat back and stared at the laptop. They were good at what they did, put their hearts into it.

  It would be nice to see them succeed.

  Then again, helping someone else got me hurt the last time.

  That was different.

  Different…how?

  She tried to quiet the mental argument with herself. They were nice guys going out of their way not to make promises to her the way Shane had.

  They hadn’t promised her forever.

  They hadn’t acted like jerks.

  So far, even in the short amount of time she’d lived with them, they’d been men of their word.

  Shoving the ugly thoughts away, she got to work. She’d agreed to do something, and she was a person of her word.

  If they let her down in the future, well…

  Then she’d blame herself for trusting.

  * * * *

  She’d immersed herself in the website, curled up on the couch with her own laptop, Baxter stretched out next to her. When the men asked her if she wanted to go to dinner and the club with them, she declined.

  “I’d rather work on this. If you want to go, go.”

  They exchanged an uneasy glance. “We don’t want to go without you,” Sean said.

  “I kind of want to get this done. And my ass needs a little time to heal from last night’s play.”

  “We’d feel bad leaving you here alone,” Max said.

  They looked pitiful. She couldn’t say no to them. “Can we not make it a late night?”

  Their smiles sealed her fate as they eagerly nodded.

  “Okay. Let me go change.”

  Although, at dinner, it hit her that she had
an opportunity to keep working even though they were out with friends. She turned to Tony. “Have you visited their website?”

  He seemed to be thinking how to phrase his answer.

  “I know it’s a crappy website,” she said. “Be honest.”

  He nodded. “If I didn’t know them in person, and the quality of their stuff, I’d never buy from them based on the website alone.”

  By the time dinner ended, she had ideas from him, as well as their other friends, regarding points to focus on when she redesigned the website. Including tips on rewriting product descriptions. Deep in thought, she remained quiet in the backseat as Max drove them to Venture.

  “Whatcha’ thinking about so hard back there?” he asked.

  “That I want to do a lot of talking to people tonight while we’re at the club.” Their friends had brought up a couple of design issues she hadn’t considered during her initial appraisal of things.

  “About?” Sean asked.

  “You two crafty bastards let me worry about Two Crafty Bastards Toys while you have fun tonight,” she said. “I’m serious about revamping the website, but I want outside input before I spend a lot of time on design changes.”

  She’d figured out which sites worked and which didn’t based on her explorations and online reviews from others. The sites people most often referred others two in group conversations such as, “Where can I buy X, Y, and Z from?” Every once in a while, in Sarasota-based groups on FetLife, TCBT was mentioned. Usually by users she knew in real life, friends who knew the men and who had purchased and used their toys.

  Usually including a caveat to ignore the quality of the website, because it didn’t reflect the excellent quality of the toys.

  She had a lot of work ahead of her to make the site competitive while rehabbing their brand presence. She was starting to suspect, after taking a look at the outdated backend store software they were using, that she’d have to completely rebuild the store from the ground up.

  Doing it wasn’t a problem, but she didn’t want to waste her time or theirs. And she didn’t want to completely revamp things only to have it make no difference.

  The men made quality stuff. Their garage workshop, taking up all of the two-car space, was amazing. They put care, craftsmanship, and R&D—usually personally—into their products. They had friends test prototypes, making refinements based on their feedback before committing to a final design.

  They had twenty styles of paddles, eight styles of straps, and seven different kinds of canes that were distinct from products she saw elsewhere. Then there was their leather gear. Not a lot, because they didn’t have the equipment, space, or personnel to make production runs, but they did have a heavy-duty industrial sewing machine that could handle leather. They’d made custom arm binders, harnesses, restraints, and other BDSM-related items.

  They also made custom creations, engraving words or initials into paddles, custom color combinations for handles and implements, and a few custom leather goods.

  Then there were the consignment sales and live events. That added a level of complication to the inventory system they’d need to keep track of things and keep customers from ordering inventory they were sold out of. Right now, they manually tracked sales in an Excel spreadsheet.

  If she could scale them up, it would mean needing a whole new system. Better to overengineer it from the beginning rather than trying to make two systems work with each other. So she’d have to include a way to make in-person sales accurately adjust inventory on the website as well.

  Hmm.

  By the time they reached Venture, her mind spun, deep in thought. The website she’d set up for Shane’s business was all labor-based, flat-rate invoicing, but the open-source software she’d used had far more capabilities. She’d spent weeks researching before instituting it, all the work paying off on the other end when her weekly invoicing entry duties went from a full work day down to fifteen minutes for new customers, or modifying customers who’d moved or adjusted their level of service.

  Yes, it would be overkill to start with for the Two Crafty Bastards Toys site, but the men had plans. And she had a completely workable solution for them.

  Now she just needed to make it happen.

  * * * *

  Sean had known they wouldn’t be able to scene at the club with Cali, but the moment they got inside she took off, making the rounds and talking with people.

  After they’d been there an hour or so, Rob and Laura caught up with them. Because of the couple’s young baby, they didn’t see them as much as they’d used to.

  “What’s Cali talking about?” Laura asked. “She’s redoing your website?”

  “Please be honest with her,” Max said. “We know the current site sucks.”

  “I wasn’t going to go that far,” Rob said.

  “It’s okay,” Sean told him. “We’ve been too busy to do anything about it. And we really don’t have the skills.”

  “If you need help with proofreading or content,” Laura said, “let me know. I can’t offer a lot programming-wise, but anything I can do to help, I will.”

  “Thanks.” Sean glanced across the room, quickly finding Cali again.

  He had a hard time keeping his eyes off her.

  They were getting ready to scene, Max looking forward to beating Sean’s ass. They were standing by a spanking bench, Sean halfway naked, when he spotted Cali talking to Lydia.

  He hadn’t been aware he was taking off after her until Max grabbed him hard by the arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Sean pointed.

  Max looked, his face quickly schooling into an expression of bland disinterest. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But—”

  Max silenced him with a hand in Sean’s hair and another on his chin, forcing Sean to look him in the eye. “You want to scene tonight, or you want to kick a hornet’s nest? Pick one.”

  Max always had handled things better in this way. Sean was quick to jump, react, where Max had a more reasoned approach, usually.

  He deflated.

  Max rewarded him with a deep, long kiss, dropping one hand to Sean’s crotch and grabbing his cock. He immediately grew hard under Max’s hand.

  “Good boy,” Max whispered in his ear. “Get your ass naked and on the bench.” He turned him around, facing away from Cali and toward the wall. “Now.”

  * * * *

  Cali knew who Lydia was, but couldn’t honestly remember ever having much if any direct contact with her. She never came to the munches, or, apparently, to the Saturday night dinners. She’d never been at one of the private parties Cali had ever attended, either, that she could recall.

  She didn’t even think they were friends on FetLife, but she’d seen others who were commenting on various threads about her vague and myriad health issues. Which was why, if rumors were correct, Lydia had dropped off the map from being a volunteer DM and desk worker at the club.

  Still, she wanted to get as many opinions as she could. Cali walked up to the woman when she spotted her finish with her conversation with someone else. Introducing herself, she immediately started in, already enthusiastic about the feedback she was getting.

  “Could I bounce a couple of things off you? I’m talking to as many people as I can tonight.”

  Lydia’s gaze swept her, making Cali feel vaguely uncomfortable. She knew the woman was a Dominatrix, that much she remembered about her FetLife profile. But other than that, Cali didn’t know her. “About what?”

  “I’m revamping the Two Crafty Bastards Toys website, and I—”

  “Good luck with that,” Lydia spat, grabbing her purse from where it sat on the floor.

  “What?”

  Lydia shot a glare across the room to where the two men were now playing. She dropped her voice. “Take my advice and don’t let them suck you into their harebrained schemes. They’ll only use you and drop you when they don’t need you anymore.”

  With that, Lydia stormed off and out
the door.

  Cali felt like something had happened, and wasn’t sure what, still processing what Lydia had said when Essie scurried over.

  “What happened? What’d that bitch say to you? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, feeling anything but. If she couldn’t ask Essie, she couldn’t ask anyone. “Does she have a problem with the guys?”

  Essie hooked an arm through Cali’s. “She’s got a problem with pretty much everyone. I think Derrick is pretty close to banning her ass from the club. Anything she said, you can pretty much toss it right out the fucking window. Along with the rest of the damn garbage. Come on. Ted just had an idea for you about the website.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday, Cali let the incident slip from her mind as she got to work on the website. Between planning the revamp and her day job, and spending time with her two hunks, the next week flew by with too much on her mind to give a crackpot any second thoughts, no matter how uncomfortably close to home Lydia had hit Cali’s fears. The men had even brought up the subject of FetLife first, wanting to change their relationship statuses to reflect her now being a part of their lives.

  She changed hers as well. It took a severe test of her will not to go hunting down Shane to see what he was up to while she was on the site.

  The men were showing her, every day, how dedicated they were to her and this budding new relationship between the three of them.

  The next Saturday night would be her first going to the club with the men, bottoming to them as more than just as a demo dolly. They’d promised her a night guaranteed to rock her socks…followed by a night at home, later, in bed that would make her forget ever wanting to leave them after six months.

  Considering they’d worked their way into her psyche, she’d moved beyond doubting their abilities. Hell, one of them could give her a sexy look and her pussy would instantly get wet.

  They seemed to want her. She wouldn’t forget what happened to her in the past, and would build her new life with an eye toward independence, but she had moved on beyond fighting the men about staying. Either six months would pass and she’d have no desire to leave them…or she’d have a nice nest egg built up when she did.