HoldingtheCards Read online

  She wasn’t sure if it was merited. A Mistress took away the places for a submissive to retreat, made him vulnerable to her by patient, tender eradication of all emotional shields, until there was nowhere he could hide from her. It worked hand in hand with proving to the sub that he could trust his Mistress at the very deepest level, making those protections unnecessary.

  Jonathan had wanted a Mistress who would treat the “breakdown” process like an amused predator cutting off a rabbit’s every path of escape. Perhaps if she had loved him better, she would have been willing to go against her own nature and provide him what he wanted. No, even then, she could not have done it. It just wasn’t in her to be vicious. That wasn’t the kind of Mistress she was, and for the process to work right, the Dom had to let go of her shields as well, perversely be as open and exposed to the sub as she demanded he be to her. She hadn’t been the right Mistress for Jonathan, the right person, the right woman.

  “Go on to the guest bathroom, I’ll use it after you.”

  She heard Josh’s footsteps retreating, and then Marcus was leaning in the doorframe, watching every shift of her expression with those brilliant green eyes. “You know,” he commented. “You are very appealing, for a woman.”

  “That’s because you get turned on watching another Dom at work, as I do.” She pursed her lips, considered him. “I wonder if I’m being too unkind, if I shouldn’t ease up a bit. I could be taking this too far, much too fast.”

  He considered that, studied the ceiling, then brought his eyes back down to her face. “However cliché it sounds, my dear, you know and I know that a Master is cruel only in order to be kind. It’s a very, very important rule.”

  The silence drew out between them and she never let her gaze drop from his. “But I don’t know him well enough. In a dungeon, there’s room for mistakes. I’ve never moved this fast with any sub.”

  “Don’t you dare lose courage on me now,” Marcus admonished. He stepped forward, touched her face, but his expression was one of understanding, not condescension. “I have extensive experience with many rebellious youngsters,” a slight smile curved his lips. “But I know, as you do, sometimes there’s an instant click. You are doing very well with Josh. If you follow your instinct, I believe there is very little you will do wrong. And I am here, just in case.”

  She considered that, nodded. “Okay,” she said, the one word quieting her worries, for now.

  It felt good, the sense of support, but as soon as the door closed behind Marcus and Lauren faced the vision in the mirror alone, she lost some of her confidence. The dominant siren she had projected became a suffering, fragile-eyed woman with haunted features.

  She had not sacrificed her whole being to Jonathan’s bullshit, damn it. She ran her tongue over her teeth, picked up some of Lisette’s perfumed body cream and dropped the towel. Watching herself, she spread the lotion over her breasts, rubbing it into the aureoles, over the nipples, watching them respond to her touch, already stimulated by the evening’s events.

  She had one or two friends with whom she was affectionate enough that occasional sex was possible, but it was mutually accepted that the emotional bond was based on friendship alone. It was something to be enjoyed, like a sport. Sports played well provided a synergistic lift when the game was in full swing, when you forgot everything but the momentum of that interaction, the playing. But you couldn’t compare sex to racquetball or golf, or a good set of tennis, even under those circumstances. If anything, it was more akin to a sport that interacted with nature. Leaning back, hiking out as a sailboat surged up to ten knots close-hauled, the water bathed in the golds and reds of sunset that was more like it. You looked over at your friend and your faces reflected the shared ecstasy of that moment. That moment became part of your bond, deepened the friendship, but it was still just friendship. It was not the stripping of the soul, daring it to touch the bared soul of another.

  Sex with someone who drew you down that path of vulnerability could make you believe that a never-ending love might lie at the end of it. That click Marcus was talking about, that too-intense feeling she had around Josh, a virtual stranger, was making her feet turn to ice while other parts of her exploded the thermometer. Maybe that was the problem, not the dysfunctional bullshit baggage she was carrying from Jonathan. Maybe she was just scared.

  Didn’t she keep telling herself she should stop thinking so much? Maybe she needed to jump off the hamster Habitrail of her mind and say fuck it. Or, fuck him, rather. Josh was a fascinating, attractive guy. What was wrong with a fling? Never mind her adamant insistence to Maria that one night stands were not her thing, that they sucked her soul dry. It wasn’t what she ultimately wanted, but maybe it would be enough for just this weekend. Dissatisfied, she picked up the brush and blow dryer and went to work on her hair. Unfortunately, the drone of the appliance did not drown out her thoughts.

  Her ex-psychotherapist had used the term D/s (once Lauren had introduced her to it) in a tone that suggested the doctor thought it was a disease. It had taken awhile, but Lauren at last had regained enough of her confidence to disagree, and dump the therapist.

  Two committed people choosing to exercise their sexuality in a dominant and submissive fashion was not the problem. Everything in nature reflected the assertion of those characteristics. Every interaction between the beasts in the forest started with it, and animals were far more connected with what was “natural” than humans.

  The problem was the all-too-unnatural dysfunctionality humans brought to the game. So what was happening here tonight? Was it a relapse or a healing, a symbolic return to her sexual self, maybe to all parts of herself?

  There was a way to give herself a hint. She retied the silk robe, hopped to the door, and opened it.

  “Josh?”

  She heard a pause in the men’s conversation, then his feet padded down the hallway. He came around the corner, a towel carelessly slung over his shoulder and his hair damp, the aroma of Lisette’s sandalwood soap coming off of him.

  Lauren lifted her hand to him and he came closer, taking it. He laced his fingers easily in hers, his brow lifted in silent question.

  “Kiss me?” she made it a soft question. Lauren wanted to be sure he understood it was a request, not part of any game or strategy.

  Josh stepped closer. Without a word, he set his hands to her waist, his warm palms covering the curves of her hips, heat through silk. He drew her to him and her fingers curled onto his hips as he brought his lips down to hers, the strands of hair on his forehead brushing her cheek.

  Lauren melted at the touch of his mouth. She relaxed in his arms, all the way down to the bones, and she reveled in his strength, which increased consecutively in his arms, chest, stomach and thighs, to accommodate her loss of self-support.

  His mouth opened hers and she moaned at the flick of tongue past her lips and teeth, the warm wet caress, the pressure of his body as he pulled her more against him.

  When he raised his head, she was barely conscious of herself as a separate being. Her eyes cleared and she blinked up at him.

  “Good,” she breathed. “I like you. I really do.”

  His eyes crinkled with humor, and he cleared his throat. “That simple, then?”

  “As long as we don’t move from this moment,” she gave him a rueful smile.

  He cupped her cheek and Lauren rested her face in the strong palm, her chin on the rapid pulse in his wrist. “Please don’t let me hurt you, Josh,” she murmured. “I couldn’t stand to do that.”

  “I’m not porcelain, Lauren. I won’t break that easily.”

  “Someone has broken you before,” she raised her head and closed her hand over that wrist. “Just as someone has me. Let’s not shatter each other again, okay?”

  He looked as if he might say many things, including the obvious truth that there was no way to prevent it if hearts got involved, but in the end he leaned in, kissed her nose.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Chapter
Ten

  Lisette believed in top quality mattresses fitted with cotton sheets and smothered in layers of quilts. It gave a guest the sense that she was burrowing into a nest, made all the stronger in a room decorated with so many soft textures and hues of nature.

  Lauren did not give any specific instructions. It was simply assumed she wished to be in the middle. She had donned an oversized T-shirt and a silk pair of panties and now lay in the center of the bed, on her side, watching Marcus.

  He turned the torchlights off, which left the room lit by the soft glow from several bowls of floating candles he had placed, strewn with flower petals, on the vanity and night tables. He casually shucked off his jeans and the silk boxers beneath and laid both over the chair. She wondered at his daring, but then realized that, from her surreptitious examination of him throughout the afternoon and evening, Josh wasn’t wearing underwear under his jeans. Marcus was not going to let his friend be embarrassed by being the only one in the buff, and Lauren had no complaints with his generosity.

  Marcus was equally beautiful beneath his clothes. Sleek lines of flank and thigh muscle suggested a home gym and daily Central Park jogging regimen. Her attention drifted low center and she concluded that those “rebellious boys” he chose to bestow with his attentions were amply rewarded.

  She raised her eyes to his. Marcus gave her a wicked grin. “No drooling, love.”

  Lauren chuckled. Behind her she heard the rustlings as Josh stripped. She could have turned and given him the same perusal, but after the kiss, she was feeling a strange shyness about looking at him. Besides, there was a pleasant torture in hearing the metallic noise of a zipper, the sound of denim being pushed down bare skin.

  He slid under the covers behind her and his heated body drew close to her back.

  If she had been told she would be ending this day tucked into bed between two obscenely attractive naked men, she would have asked the informant if she could also book the space shuttle for a moon tour while she was at it.

  Josh laid his arm about her waist. He did not fit his body to hers, but the invitation was there if she should choose to accept it. Marcus crawled in facing her. She felt his hand slide over Josh’s arm so they were woven protectively around her. Josh did not draw back from his friend’s touch, though the only place Marcus’s hand could be resting would be on Josh’s waist or the point of his hip.

  Marcus had the faint smell of expensive cologne. It brought to her mind a chic night in a New York gallery, and an image of him dressed in a suit custom made in Hong Kong, finished with a silk tie and elegant cuff links. Josh was all musky male, earth and trees, evoking the vision of a native slipping through the forest, a shadow as lithe and intriguing as a passing wolf.

  It was an unsettling contrast, and an altogether attractive one. Lauren slid one arm over Marcus’s bare ribs, touching the light down across his abdomen with the tips of her fingers as she did so. She slid her other arm up to Josh’s hand at her waist and tugged him closer. He obliged, sliding in and cupping her silk clad backside in the hot cradle of his thighs. He tightened the coil of his arm so his arm circled most of her waist, his fingers curved between it and the mattress. Her shoulder blades pressed against his chest. His head was just behind hers, his breath brushing the nape and side of her neck. If she tilted her head just a bit, she would brush her jugular against his lips. Her fingers trailed Marcus’s bare spine, an idle stroking gesture, just indulging the pleasure of contact. Her forehead rested against his muscular bicep as he lay his angel’s head on his crooked arm and smiled into her near face.

  Their legs were a delightful tangle; Josh’s couched up behind hers, one calf insinuated between her calves, his toes idly stroking her curled ones. Marcus’s leg lay over both of theirs.

  Lauren giggled. “This is like a pile of puppies,” she said.

  Marcus chuckled in the dim light. “You’re a bit less fuzzy, love, and Josh… Well, he has practically no chest hair. I’ve often wondered, does he even have hair—”

  Lauren squealed as the blanket above her kicked up in violent disturbance as Josh fended off Marcus’s playful grabs over her hips.

  “You’ve seen it often enough to know,” Josh said evenly. “The only reason you come here is to see me naked when I swim.”

  “Yes, there are no good looking men in New York,” Marcus said dryly. “I have to go a thousand miles to the middle of nowhere to get a look at a fine piece of ass. And a straight piece of ass at that.”

  Lauren shrieked as the blankets kicked up again. Josh punched at his friend and Marcus retaliated, launching a brief tussle. Lauren struggled to get her own blows in and succeeded in swatting them both. “Hey! Innocent civilian caught in the middle here.”

  Marcus grinned over her head. “Saved from an ass kicking by Mom.”

  “I know you were.”

  Lauren choked on a laugh at the suitably childish retort and seized Josh’s arm, clamping it around her waist. She used the same hand to shove Marcus’s head back down on the pillow beside hers. “Are you sure you two aren’t brothers?”

  “No, thank God. I wouldn’t want to endanger my soul with the kind of thoughts I have concerning Josh’s straight ass.” Marcus’s teeth flashed at Josh’s snort, but he settled back in, laying his arm once again over his friend’s on Lauren’s hip.

  There was a moment of silence, then Marcus’s voice murmured just above the crown of her head. “We are brothers.” Lauren felt him squeeze Josh’s arm. “Family formed by circumstance rather than blood.”

  “Sometimes it’s stronger that way,” she said, and then they all were still, aware of one another, and not needing to say more.

  The silence was a peaceful one, but as it settled over them like drifts of warm sand into hollows between rocks, Lauren’s mind turned to the immediate physical sensations, and the input there was far from serene. The silk of the panties she wore with her oversized T-shirt was a transparent conductor of the heat of Josh’s groin. The way they were nested against each other, his aroused member fit intimately into the silken channel of her labia and the crease of her backside, giving her a screaming urge to rub. His occasional slight shifts, which pressed him more firmly into that channel, were not easing that desire. There was moisture dampening the cloth between them, the perspiration created by flesh pressed against flesh, and her body’s response, oiling itself for penetration.

  She could part her thighs, slide her finger along the fragile line of elastic, pull the undergarment aside and let him pull her down on him. She had asked him to be here, to sleep with her, for the intimacy. She had enjoyed her power over him. Now that had opened a door deeper within her, as such play always did. She wanted to go beyond that, link her desire with his and let it overpower them, wrap them in its cocoon and let them sate themselves until the experience transformed them.

  How could the emotional need vibrating from her in waves not be pounding against his senses? Her body was trembling with it. The men had to feel it. Josh had to know how close she was to giving in and letting him have her body to plunder at will.

  His hand touched her hair, stroked, soothing her as she had soothed him. “Sleep,” he murmured. “Just sleep.”

  The warm, non-sexual touch was a sweet, searing contrast to what was happening below their waists, and it gradually balanced the scale in her mind, bringing her back to a more level perspective. He could not give her what she sought in one fell swoop, like sitting down to one meal to nourish the body for a lifetime. It didn’t work that way, though many people, including herself, had often made that mistake, thinking one gigantic fuck would answer all the needs hungering inside. He knew it, she knew it, but it was him who took the reins at this moment and slowed the wagon down. He knew how to be strong.

  His perception of her needs was unnerving, considering less than twelve hours ago they had been strangers.

  She took a firm hold of Marcus’s arm at her waist, like the safety bar on a roller coaster, and focused on Josh’s hand instead of
his tempting cock. It took some time, but beneath his gentle touch, the dangerous intensity building within her eased, and at length she expelled it in a soft sigh. She rooted her cheek deeper into the support of Marcus’s bicep and Lisette’s pillows. With Josh’s hand caressing her hair, she slid into sensual dreams with the two men intertwined around her.

  * * * * *

  Her dreams were a languid swim through warm liquid, populated by underwater plants of vivid colors, with fleshy smooth stalks that stroked her body like long, silken fingers. She swam through them and rolled lazily, feeling their touch all along her skin, naked in the substance of the womb.

  A shadow fell upon her. She looked up. A man was just above her, outlined by the shafts of sunlight piercing the water’s surface, far above them. No, not a man, not exactly. Her eyes traveled over his familiar face with gray eyes and floating hair. The water etched out every feature, from his bare chest and shoulders, and blatant arousal, to the long, powerful scaled tail that marked him as a merman and kept him vertical above her as she lay on her back, floating.

  Lauren felt the whisper touch of the ocean garden again. The sea fronds wound themselves around her wrists and ankles, an inarguable pressure that drew her thighs far apart and spread-eagled her helpless before the watching sea creature. His eyes darkened further at the site of her exposed sex and, as she struggled, part alarm and part quivering excitement, he began to descend toward her. His tail propelled him with the casual ease of a shark, but there was nothing casual about his expression. It was the comfort of moving in one’s own element. In that way one often did in a dream, for a moment Laurel stood apart from her dream self and recognized what was familiar about it. It was the way she often moved when in the clubs at night.