She’s out of my league. What does she see in me?
Chelbie frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Might as well own up to it. “You’ve got your shit together. I feel like a loser next to you. I’m going to be up front and admit I’m not rich. I’m scraping by, but if it wasn’t for living with Nick, I’d be in serious trouble. Nick’s the successful one. He’s got the college degree and the great job he’ll probably retire from. I’m…broke.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“That doesn’t bother you?”
“If you were lying around and not giving a shit, not working your ass off, yeah. That would bother me. Mallory was an orphan. Her uncle was a royal ass. She had a roof over her head, barely. She had to bust her ass for every extra penny she earned. She worked a job while going to school, and doing freelance work on the side.”
“I’m not an orphan.” He leaned against the counter. “I just have dick parents.”
“You guys aren’t close to them anymore, huh?”
“No. I feel like they lied to us. Not just about how they felt for each other. All through high school, I worked my ass off. It was never quite good enough for the grades I needed to get a scholarship. That was while working on my music at the same time, and being in band. They said nooo problem, you’ll go to college. We’ll make sure of it.”
“What changed?”
He let out a disgusted snort. “They dropped the bomb on us. Said they couldn’t take it anymore. And the money they were going to use for my college tuition went straight to the lawyers’ pockets. They had to sell the house, which they were underwater on. By the time they went their separate ways, neither of them barely had two nickels to rub together.”
The floor held his interest. He didn’t want to look and see if Chelbie had pity in her eyes for him or not. “I tried. I got a couple of loans, but I couldn’t keep my grades up to hold onto them. After two years, I said fuck it and gave up. Went to work full time.”
“Do you guys see your parents?”
“Not any more often than we have to. Dad lives over in Orlando and dates anything of legal age possessing a vagina. Mom’s living with her sister in Tallahassee and working in a call center up there for some place. I really don’t care where. You’re lucky, you know that? Your parents are still together and not being total dicks. It was like ours enjoyed using a scorched earth policy against each other. We grew up thinking we were the lucky ones, you know? Our friends’ parents were all getting divorced, or on their second or third marriages, and here we were, a perfect nuclear family.”
She reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry,” she quietly said. “But, to be honest? This is why I want to take things really slow. Because I don’t want to make a mistake like that. And I don’t want to end up like that. I’d rather take my time now, see if it’s right, and go from there.”
“You sure you want a poly relationship?”
She grinned. “I don’t honestly think one of you could handle me by yourselves.”
* * * *
Chelbie pretty much had dinner ready by the time Nick arrived home. Even more than ever, she wanted to keep spending time with them. After Rich made his revelation to her, he seemed to relax. As if that knowledge had been holding him back, afraid she’d reject him.
She couldn’t care less if he was rich or not. Yes, she’d told Mallory she’d wanted a self-supporting guy, but Rich was. He was working his ass off. No, he hadn’t been through a great tragedy like a hurricane or surviving a war.
But he was also a sensitive guy. She could tell from the way he’d talked about their parents’ divorce how deeply it’d hurt him.
She got it. She wanted a relationship like her parents had. Well, the love they had for each other. No way she’d waste her life on a lie, on being anything other than genuine to herself. Especially not staying together just for the sake of the kids.
Look where that had gotten the Hurst parents. Two sons who didn’t respect them, didn’t like them, and barely communicated with them. They’d failed their sons as parents, living a lie instead of just owning up to their mistake early on and divorcing then.
Rich had paid the price of that lie. Nick was smart in a numbers and analytical kind of way. Rich was the emotional one, smart in an artistic way.
Yin and yang.
The guy she wanted, only in two different bodies.
After they ate dinner and cleaned up the dishes, they sat and talked until nearly eleven, when she started yawning.
“I’m going to call it a night, gents,” she said, standing and stretching. Then, she turned, leaned in, and kissed first Rich, then Nick. Slow, lingering kisses, promises of more to come without getting greedy. And in this way, neither disappointed her, either.
“Saturday, let’s get together,” she said.
“I have to work,” Rich said.
She shrugged. “So? I’m used to keeping late hours on Saturdays. Nick and I can go to the club, and then we can come back here and I can fill you in on what you missed.” She smiled.
“Is that a euphemism for sex?” Nick asked, pleasantly surprising her by his directness.
“Maaaybe. Or, at the very least, it’s a euphemism for maybe I can start showing you two some kinky play. I have more experience in that area than you guys do. Orgasm play doesn’t have to mean sex.”
She gathered her purse. “In fact, there’s a whooole lot of play we can do that doesn’t mean sex and yet to the non-kinky person sure would look like it. If you want to, that is. I mean, I’m being honest here. I’m not a vanilla kind of girl. You need to learn the stuff I like, and see if it’s even going to be stuff you like. If we’ll be compatible. You two might decide I’m not your cuppa. Which is cool. But we’ll never know unless we try. Talking will only get us so far. Right?”
The brothers exchanged a glance before looking at her again and nodding.
They were so cute. “Eeegggcellent,” she said. “I have several friends I play with at the club who are just friends. But I trust them, I trust how they play. And I don’t want to lead you guys on if you decide I’m too much for you. That’s not fair to you. I’ll come over Saturday around five, Nick. You and I can go to dinner with the gang, and then go to the club. When we get back, Rich can get caught up.”
They nodded again.
“Good.”
They walked her out to her car, hugging her. Even their bodies felt right against hers. She was five five, and they were around six feet tall. As she headed home, she couldn’t help being hopeful.
I have a really good feeling about this.
* * * *
The men stood there, watching as the taillights of her Bug disappeared into the night.
Nick said it first. “Are we in over our heads with her? I really like her, but what if we aren’t kinky enough for her?”
Next to him, Rich sighed. “I don’t know. But she seems determined to figure that out. You told me to keep an open mind, so I’m going to. I was afraid she’d be turned off by me being broke. I got nothing else.”
Nick still stared, even though she’d turned out of the complex and was gone. “She seems to know what she wants.”
“Yeah. I got that impression.”
“We already know Mom and Dad did things the wrong way. Maybe this is the right way.”
“Only one way we’ll find out.” Rich turned to head inside. “We’re no worse off than we were before we met her. Maybe our luck’s finally changed.”
Nick still stood there, contemplating, even after he heard the apartment door shut. “Maybe it has,” he said to himself before heading inside.
Chapter Nine
The three of them texted back and forth until Saturday. Nick was glad he already knew what to expect to see at the club Saturday night when they went there after having dinner with the rest of the group.
Tony and Mike had taken Nick under their metaphorical wings last Saturday, explaining lots of things, answering his myriad questions.
&
nbsp; Nick knew that, despite what the others jokingly warned might happen in the future, he was currently not a sadist. Dominant, definitely. Sexually aggressive and controlling? Yep. He’d been drawn to the forced orgasm scenes, the women restrained and made to come repeatedly.
Hell, yeah, he could get into that. He’d never really even thought that was possible before, despite knowing the anatomical basics. Yes, he could make a woman come.
At least, they’d told him and Rich they’d come.
But this was something he knew Rich would enjoy, too.
Now he had a target to aim for, a basic area of expertise that drew him in. He’d love to learn how to tie the elaborate rope harnesses he saw at the class last week, restrain Chelbie with them, and then make her come until she begged to stop.
Oh, yes. That primed his pump. His cock grew hard just thinking about it.
Intellectually, he got that some people liked pain. And he wouldn’t mind doing some impact play with Chelbie. But if her interests migrated to the extreme end of the scale, either he’d have to learn to be okay with her playing with others so she could get that fix, or they’d have to say good-bye to her. He knew Rich wouldn’t want to get involved with heavy sadism, either.
He’d done a lot of research online this past week, too, at night, in the privacy of his bedroom.
Rubbed out more than a few in the process.
With some knowledge, he’d been able to figure himself out a little bit. He’d filled out—and forwarded the url to Rich as well—a BDSM checklist. Between that and his newfound knowledge, Nick felt far more confident than he had just a week ago.
Rich had already left for work when Chelbie arrived right on time, wearing a black sundress and carrying a small tote bag in addition to her purse. “I brought clothes to change into at the club,” she said.
“You want total honesty, right?”
She frowned. “Of course.”
“I don’t have this figured out yet. I have an idea of what I like. What I won’t be able to do, at least not at this time, is heavy impact play. I just…can’t. Or stuff like needles or cutting or anything like that. Is that going to be a problem?”
“Whew. You scared me for a second there. No, it’s not a problem. I’m not a pain slut. An extra cane stroke here or there, sure. But as Mallory and Kel like to call it, I don’t play in the shadows. At all.” She sidled up to him, staring up into his eyes. “I like to be tied up. Cuffed and collared. Restrained. Played with. And forced to come until you decide to let me stop. With safewords, of course,” she added. “In bed, if you try missionary on me every time, we’re through. Just sayin’.”
He laughed. “Okay.”
“See? That was a negotiation right there. This isn’t brain surgery. People fuck it up trying to make it complicated. How does Rich feel?”
“I’m pretty sure he and I are on the same page.”
“Good.”
“What I’m not sure about is if I’d be okay sharing you with anyone but Rich, even for play.”
She cocked her head at him. “That might be a problem. I’m a demo dolly for Kel and Scrye and some others sometimes. I’d hate to stop doing that.”
“Like at the class last week?”
She nodded.
He thought about it. “That’s different. That’s not real play. Not like what I saw last Saturday night.”
“So you’d be okay with that?”
“I think so. But if you wanted to play-play with someone else, I might not be okay with that.”
“See? That’s perfect. That’s good. You told me what you aren’t comfortable with.”
“But will it be a problem?”
“I don’t know. We’d have to talk more about it. It is, however, a damn good start. Is it the orgasm play that bothers you? Or would you be okay with someone playing with me, like for really heavy impact play, if I decided I wanted to do that?”
He considered it. “You know, I honestly can’t answer that. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“Another point for you to ponder,” she said. “Sometimes, Mal plays with other people. Not all the time, but if it’s a busy night at the club and one of their friends wants to play with her, she will. But it’s always with panties and a bra on, and never orgasm play. And Kel gives her aftercare. Prime example, she loves singletails, and he doesn’t feel he’s good enough with one to use one on her. So he lets her play with someone who is.”
Mulling that over, he realized what she was saying. “I might be okay with that. I’d have to talk to Rich.”
She draped her arms around his neck. “Negotiations. Communication.” She rubbed noses with him, hardening his cock.
She must have felt it, because she wiggled her hips against him, making it even worse. “This is how a relationship is built. One stone at a time. One negotiation at a time. With room to change things if we change.”
“I wish our parents had learned that years ago.”
She brushed a kiss across his lips. “Never lie to me. Never violate a safeword. Always talk to me, no matter how uncomfortable it feels. Those are my three big rules. Oh, and if you harm me, Tilly will make sure they never find your body, with Mal’s help. That pretty much covers everything that will ever crop up.”
“Heh. You said crop.”
She grinned. “So I did. And if you play your cards right, buster, I might let you use one on my ass tonight.”
* * * *
They were still a ways from sex, Chelbie knew. They needed discussions about sexual history, and she wanted recent test results.
She wasn’t about to let down her guard, no matter how many thresholds the men had passed toward gaining full and unfettered access to her heart.
Some of those thresholds they’d passed before she’d even realized they’d made it that far.
Which scared her a little. In the good ways.
Very good ways.
After dinner, they went to the club, where Nick signed up for a membership for himself, as well as paid for one for Rich. All Rich would have to do when she finally got him there would be to fill out the waver and produce his ID.
Max, Sean, and Cali were there, too. Not only had they set up a table over on the social area side of the space, they were going to do a scene later with one of their new bondage frames.
Chelbie volunteered to watch their table for them while they played. Nick sat there with her, picking up and examining the various implements.
“I looked on their website,” he said. “That cat of theirs is hysterical. And the tortoise, too.”
“I know, right? What a scream. The tortoise is George. He’s actually Abbey’s. She lets them use him for photo sessions with Baxter.” She pointed out Abbey and Gilo, where they were playing on the other side of the dungeon. Abbey had Gilo strapped to a St. Andrew’s cross and was in the process of viciously caning his ass. “They’re switches.”
“Oookaaay.”
She giggled. “That means it’s not a case of who’s on first, but who’s on top. They’re fun to watch.”
She picked up one of the Two Crafty Bastards Toys’ new prototype implements. Max had told her they’d dubbed it the Silencer. A piece of aluminum tubing about sixteen inches long, with a vinyl handle on one end, it had various-sized holes drilled along its surface in neat rows. The other end was left open.
Deceptively light, when Chelbie whacked it against her thigh she winced, realizing it was a lot stingier than it appeared. And, from the looks of the rough edges around the holes, would put a hurting on someone if they were hit too hard or in the wrong spot with it.
“That’s…interesting.” She put it back on the table.
Nick didn’t pick it up. “It looks painful.” He stared at her thigh. “Really painful.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed at one of the marks. “That thing could easily draw blood.”
He picked up a slappy rubber strap, fixed to an acrylic handle shaped like a butt plug. “Double your pleasure?” he asked as he smac
ked it against his own thigh.
“Something like that. It’s a multitasker.”
He slapped himself a little harder, then slapped it against his other arm. “I can see Rich and I have a lot of practice ahead of us.”
Chelbie grinned. “That’s half the fun.”
* * * *
Max, Sean, and Cali let Chelbie borrow a few of their tester implements and take them home with her when she and Nick left around midnight.
Including the Silencer. As scary as it was, she wanted to play with it a little more, to use it as a prime example of how a very severe implement could have more than one use.
She imagined if it was stuck in the freezer for an hour or so that it would make a great sensation play implement.
The men needed to learn the biggest part of play would take place in their brains, not in their brawn.
After returning from the club, she grabbed a duffel bag out of her car, one she’d kept quiet about. In it, a few things she had, like her play collar and cuffs, some snap clips…
And her Hitachi vibrator. Along with a dozen condoms, a tube of lube, several pairs of nitrile gloves, and two dildos.
If the men wanted to play with her, she’d play right back, but they were going to play on her terms tonight. She’d gladly make them come, but until they crossed a few more thresholds and covered some more basics, they’d come safely wrapped and with their dicks outside her body.
Mallory texted her just as they were walking into Nick’s apartment. She replied, told her where she was, and that she’d probably be there for several more hours.
“So, what would you like to try first?” she asked Nick.
He shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t know where to start. This isn’t moving too fast for you?”
“I’m pragmatic. There are two parts to this. The non-kinky relationship part, and the kinky. Sex can qualify in both categories. But play and sex are different.”
She held up a finger. “Rule one, you don’t try to stick your penis in me tonight. We can get each other off as many times as we want, but no sex.”