Reaching out, she trailed her fingers over his thigh. He was still blatantly aroused, such that she licked her lips at the sight. She wanted to touch him. She wouldn't, of course, wouldn't distract him further, but he obviously wasn't as sure of that as she was. Closing his hand over hers, he held it. She gave him an impish smile and he narrowed his eyes at her, though his mouth twitched.
"Yes sir. I'll be in within the hour."
She bit back a curse of her own. She and Chris both knew the demands of Geoff's job. He wasn't high enough on the totem pole to secure many work-free weekends, though it had improved since his first few years with the firm. He still worked long hours, but he could do more of it at home, and there were brief periods where they could spend the day together, or watch a movie and have dinner in the evening. Or, true bliss, they could take a three-day weekend in Asheville or Myrtle Beach, a getaway. She thought of the last time they'd done that, her stretched out on the beach between the two of them, the sun baking their skin like a coating of molasses. They'd bodysurfed and played in the waves together.
For the past several years, it had never occurred to any of them to take a vacation on their own, or with different friends. The three of them were a unit, whether they'd made it official or not. And Geoff had finally acknowledged it with those delicious words.
"Chris and I would take turns eating you for hours."
Geoff clicked off and looked down at her. Stretching out her fingers, she teased the firm muscle of his thigh despite his hold on her hand. "I know you have to go, but I don't want you to."
"I know. Stay here and rest a few minutes while I get dressed. I mean it. Don't get up until I come back and make sure you're fine on your feet."
"It was just an orgasm, not a blood sugar crash." Though the feeling was similar. She'd seen Flo give aftercare to her subs. Sometimes she held them just the way Sam had needed Geoff to hold her. The Mistress said that the psychological journey a Dom and sub took during a session could put the sub into what she called subspace, a disoriented euphoria that impaired physical and mental judgment. Sam wasn't sure she'd gone that far, but she was knocked off her axis, for sure.
"I know you have to go, but would you mind lying with me, just a minute? I won't get all wild and crazy on you. Promise."
Usually she thought these things over before blurting them out, but maybe that was part of what the subspace thing did. She felt like she could say anything, trust her Dom with all her thoughts and feelings.
Geoff smiled but put the earpiece on the side table and stretched his long body out next to her. She gravitated to him like a magnet, burrowing against him as he wrapped his arms around her. Their legs twined together, his thigh over hers, her leg bent and resting between his so their bodies could be pressed together from thigh to chest. He put his head over hers, kissing her hair. "Did I hurt you?"
"Yes. I liked it. I liked all of it. I want to do more. Please."
That stillness gripped him again. Stroking her hair from her cheek, he kept his lips pressed to her temple. When she would have said more, he made a quelling noise and shook his head. She subsided, vaguely dissatisfied, but he was holding her, and that made up for a lot. After a few minutes, he kissed her forehead again and drew away to retrieve her T-shirt. She didn't want to wear it, liking how his eyes rested on her in her half-dressed state, but he didn't give her a choice. After he guided her arms back into the sleeves and pulled the shirt down to just above her midriff, he lowered her back onto the pillows and rose. "I'll get dressed and come back. Stay put," he reminded her.
Maybe if she were a sub-for-spice-only kind of girl, she would have teased him with an Or what? flirty taunt. But she wasn't. Evolving or not, he wasn't that kind of Dom, either. She wanted to show him she could obey, to please him. He studied her an extra moment, as if reading all that from her face, then he nodded and left her.
She listened to him move down the hall and heard the snap of the light switch in his room. Her and Chris's bedrooms were on one side of the hall, while Geoff had the master bedroom across from them. He had a king-sized bed, and since that room was the only one that could accommodate its size, neither she nor Chris had disputed him having the master. They probably wouldn't have even if he'd had a twin bed. It was just one of many ways they acknowledged his alpha rank in their trio. Or at least she did. Chris perhaps wouldn't have given it any thought for different reasons.
He didn't have a bed at all, not technically. Chris had a mattress on the floor and a hammock strung between two supporting studs above it, like a modified form of bunk beds. Sometimes he slept on one, sometimes on the other. He had both sleeping options up against the opposite side of the wall where her headboard was, so sometimes before they went to sleep at night, he'd knock on the wall and play Name That Tune with her. She could tell if he was in the hammock or on the mattress by where the taps happened. Since the very first night they'd started living here, he'd always tapped "Itsy Bitsy Spider" up and down the wall as his signoff and her bedtime song, to help send her off to sleep.
She tapped it out now for herself, up between the slats of her headboard. When she heard Geoff returning, she turned on her side toward the door, eager to see him. He didn't wear a suit to the office on the weekends, but he still dressed professionally: golf shirt and slacks, sleek belt and polished loafers. "I don't know how long he'll keep me."
She bit back a sigh. He had that look, the one that said he thought they needed to ease back, reevaluate. Maybe even pretend it hadn't happened. If he did that, she might just kill him.
Watching her with thoughtful eyes, he bent and kissed her lightly. He'd done that plenty of times, a sign of their "friendship." However, this time he coupled the casual gesture with something else. Bending over her abdomen, he pushed back the hem of her shirt and put his lips to her navel piercing, a little pewter bear with tiny rhinestones for eyes. She shuddered at the moist heat of his mouth, a tingle running through her as he tugged on it with his teeth, the tip of his tongue caressing her before he straightened. Squeezing her hand, he gave her a hard look.
"I did hear what you said, Sam. What we did wasn't wrong, but I want to process it. Let's just leave it there for a while and both think about it. Chris will be back in a couple of days."
"Did you like it? What we did?" Her heart thudded as she sought any trace of regret.
"You know I did." He touched her face. "Leave it alone for now. You feel okay? Steadier?"
She nodded, but that didn't satisfy him. When she teased him by getting up and doing a twirl, he shook his head and moved to the doorway.
"You know where I'll be. Call me if you need me."
She needed him. God, how she needed him. She wanted to take all of this as a good sign, but she already sensed she was going to have to keep pushing. She didn't want to disrespect his feelings on the matter, but she just couldn't wait for Chris's return. If she did that, they'd do the damn male solidarity thing, resisting together what she now knew for certain they should all be embracing. She couldn't tolerate another minute of them watching her with eyes that said how much more they wanted, all while they stayed behind the perimeter of their convictions, the push-pull of those ties keeping them all close, but held at a certain distance at the same time.
She heard the dead bolt turn as he left through the kitchen door. He always did that when she was here by herself. If he worked late and Chris was out of town, he'd call her at dinner and before bedtime, making sure she'd set the security alarm both times. But it wasn't a double standard. When he or Chris was running late and didn't call, one of the other two would track the missing person down via text, email or phone, to verify all was well. They watched out for one another.
She turned onto her other side, curled up into a ball and wrapped her arms around her pillow, imagining Geoff holding her again. That protective care had been there from the beginning, hadn't it? She'd been attending State for her business degree when she'd had the misfortune of getting involved with Anthony Williams.
Flo had told her that submissives were sometimes prone to getting involved with alpha males who put off the Dom vibes, but who in reality were just overbearing assholes.
"Not all Doms are obvious alpha males, and many alpha males are not Doms," she'd said emphatically.
Anthony didn't like hearing the word no. When she broke off the relationship, he told her she was the first woman who thought herself not good enough for him. Then he started calling her twenty times in the middle of the night and confronting her at unexpected places: the coffee shop, coming out of her yoga class. His harassment built up so gradually that it wasn't until she'd lost ten pounds, was having trouble maintaining her grades and jumped at every noise outside her apartment that she realized she had a problem. At which point she discovered the harsh truth every woman who'd ever had a stalker or abuser faced. Everyone's hands were tied unless he actually did something to her. Anthony was a law student and knew far too well how to skirt the edges of such rules.
So she worked on ways to protect herself. She moved to an apartment complex off campus. For a short time things improved, since she did all she could to make sure he didn't know where she lived. Then one night, she'd pulled out her key to unlock her door and suddenly there he was, behind her. He was drunk, belligerent and on a rant about how she didn't know what she was walking away from.
She wasn't a fool. Instead of opening her door, which would give him the chance to push her inside, she'd thrown the key as far from them as she could and tried to get away. When he grabbed her arm, any reservations about being overly dramatic vanished. She screamed her goddamned lungs out.
He hit her, probably to shut her up, but then his rage spilled over. She hit the wall on the next punch. As she slid down it, trying to cover her face with her hands, he started kicking her, his fists continuing to rain down on her head and shoulders.
Just when the terror of realizing he could kill her before anyone could stop him was closing over her, he was gone. She'd opened her eyes to see a man built like Thor--the Chris Hemsworth version--pluck Anthony clean off his feet and slam him against the entryway wall so hard the siding cracked. Her rescuer wore a T-shirt and jeans stained with dirt, while another man, this one dressed like he'd just come from an office, crouched over her. Despite the differences in their appearances, she had no doubt from the well-dressed man's hard expression and taut body that he was more than capable of protecting her from a follow-up attack if Anthony got loose. Just as she was pretty sure nothing was getting free of that other male once he had it in his large fists.
The police were called. Anthony was charged with assault and released on bail. A first-time offender with a high-priced attorney, he was sentenced to six months of community service and anger management classes. In the meantime, Chris Montague and Geoff Tywin told her they had an extra bedroom and could use a third tenant to share rent costs. She couldn't explain why she trusted them so immediately, or how she'd known they'd get along so well, but she moved in with them the same day they offered. The two of them ferried her small amount of furniture to their apartment and had her settled in a couple of hours, after which they shared their first pizza together on the floor of the living room. The local pizza place offered a vegan pie option, and they gallantly each tried a slice before returning to their own hamburger-and-pork sausage blend.
She smiled at the memory. They teased her about her dietary choice, but the two of them had never been mean about it. When they were in charge of the grocery list, both were careful to double-check ingredients for shared dishes. In turn, she respected their choice to eat meat--mostly--but had gradually migrated them to organic and humanely raised options.
Her move into their apartment was originally couched as a temporary situation, since she was only a few months from graduation, like Geoff. Then Geoff was offered a position in a Charlotte firm. Chris, working for a local Raleigh landscaping company, was ready to make a change, so he decided to tag along. Since Sam had interned with a Charlotte bank and the job opportunities for her were best in that city, they'd found their current rental house together, and that was where they'd been for the past several years.
It had taken her a while to reclaim confidence in her judgment and restore herself mentally and physically. She was amused and touched by how her new roommates became involved in that. Chris brought her vegan cupcakes to help her regain weight and Geoff coaxed her out with him on his daily runs. They were decent, good men.
At first, because of Geoff and Chris's close rapport, she'd assumed they were gay. Geoff was handsome and a snappy dresser, after all, and there were a reason stereotypes existed--they were often true. Chris wasn't a snappy dresser, but he had a certain vibe toward Geoff.
Over time, she learned enough of their dating history to know they appreciated women. However, whenever they talked about dating, it was always double dating, and nothing had panned out for either of them into any meaningful relationships. Though she couldn't point to Geoff making any direct mentions of dating men, she deduced fairly quickly that Geoff was comfortably bisexual. Chris . . . as far as men went, there only seemed to be one toward whom he exhibited that level of interest: Geoff. Yet they seemed solidly based in a platonic relationship, on the surface at least.
If she'd nursed any idea that they were in denial about their feelings toward one another, the longer she spent with them, the more she realized it wasn't denied as much as it was . . . dormant? Waiting for something?
Around the time she accepted that conclusion, she also realized they were noticing her in a definitely heterosexual way. Though they took care not to ever make such subtle cues uncomfortable for her, she'd grown more conscious of that regard every day.
So here they were. Maybe they were like three plants who'd needed one another's proximity to flourish and grow, twine together and become one. She sensed they were pretty close to the twining part; she just wondered if there was a fertilizer to speed the process.
Grinning at the thought, she rolled out of bed. Chris was their green thumb. Maybe she should ask him that question. She could just imagine what his reaction would be.
***
Geoff's text came in later that day, telling her he'd be working late, well past her normal bedtime. Disappointing, but certainly not unexpected. She occupied herself in the usual ways: watching TV, playing on Pinterest, reading in the backyard. In the evening, she texted to tell him she'd set the alarm, punctuating it with a smiley face and several heart emoticons, sap that she was. He sent her a brief okay, though the heart emoticon he included made her smile.
Waking Monday morning, she wasn't sure he'd even been home. A text telling her he'd sacked out in his small office for a short three hours before his morning meeting confirmed it. With a sigh, she showered and got ready for work. As she was heading out the door, she received a text from Chris, saying he anticipated being home later in the week. He'd attached some pictures of seabirds and other scenery from Gulfport.
When he got home, what should she tell him about what had happened? Or would Geoff do it? Tonight, Geoff would likely be home. Did she keep pursuing this with him, trying to get him fully on board before Chris's return, or should she listen to Geoff, wait until Chris got back and then try to talk it out with them again?
Though that seemed the safest route, her instincts told her differently. She needed to make sure she and Geoff were a little further along. She needed to make sure he was pushed to the point she was--not content to let things stay as they were. She ignored the little voice that suggested it was more her OCD nature than her instincts pushing her in that direction.
She almost didn't talk to Flo about it at lunch, afraid her friend might disagree and sway her on it. But as they were hoofing it through downtown on their lunch walk, it all came spilling out, in enough detail she was sort of appalled at herself. But she pressed forward with her questions.
"I don't want to wait for Chris to get back. I want to do something else to throw this in Geoff's face, make him react. What kind
of sub does that? Am I being too pushy? I'm afraid I'm too revved up over it all, not using good judgment. Flo, what happens if I do the wrong thing and ruin our friendship?"
Keeping it all percolating through the morning had obviously turned her into a teakettle about to blow. Flo linked arms with her and kept them moving forward.
"First off, breathe. Second, you need to think about something pretty significant. Yes, you're friends, but you stopped being only friends some time ago." She ticked off the points on her long nails. "When was the last time any one of you had a date? Or didn't spend most your free social time with each other? You're lovers, even if you're not sharing a bed. You've already crossed that line."
"I've dated. I've . . ." Sam trailed off. "Okay, a year ago."
"You're a good-looking twenty-five-year-old woman, and you last had a date a year ago. How many have you turned down?"
"A few. But they weren't really right for me. Sometimes I've worried that was because of Anthony. I don't really trust anyone like I trust Geoff and Chris. Am I using them as a crutch?"
"Only you can answer that. Didn't Mark from Records ask you to join us at that new bar this week? In kind of a Let's see how we like each other in a group way?"
"Yes."
Florence shrugged. "Well, that seems a safe way to resolve that question in your mind, but I honestly think you're just frustrated that Geoff hasn't jumped in with both feet. And, honey, I can tell you this. You can't push a seasoned Dom into anything, so the fact he might be new to it but is being so careful with you makes me have good feelings about what kind of Master he'll be, even if it's driving you batshit."
Sam rolled her eyes. "Great. Dom bonding. Want to stand in as his proxy and let me slap you upside your stubborn-ass head?"
"Only if you want to draw back a stump." Flo smiled serenely. "As far as you not taking risks because of Anthony, it seems to me your relationship with Chris and Geoff has strengthened your confidence in yourself, your sense of your own sexuality and what you truly want out of a relationship. So stop worrying so much. Don't you think your relationship with Chris and Geoff can handle a few strains on it, especially if it helps it grow?"