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  She wrinkles her nose. “Not my favourite, but I can pick around them.”

  “Cheese?”

  “Yes. All of it. Extra cheese. That’s what motivates me through a workout, the promise of creamy, salty…” She trails off as her cheeks flood red. “Cheese.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You’re terrible,” she whispers.

  “Definitely. It’s my best trait.”

  She takes a long, slow sip of wine as she looks me over. “You’ve got lots of awesome traits. Dirty is just one.”

  It’s the only one that makes people stick around for any length of time. “You want to go sit outside?”

  She gives me a delicate frown before nodding. She didn’t miss my change of subject. “Sure.”

  I help her down, then stick the salad bowl in the fridge before grabbing the wine and Lachlan’s glass, too.

  On the deck, I deliver the chef his drink and a quick, hard kiss before settling in one of the two Muskoka chairs in the corner. Beth curls up in my lap, and I play with her hair as Lachlan asks her about her workout. Apparently he’s been giving her gruff exercise tips for a year.

  “You haven’t taken her to the gym on the Hill?”

  He shoots me a silencing look and Beth squirms in my lap. Ah, I’ve stepped in it.

  Fuck it, I don’t care. “What?”

  He sighs and grabs his wine.

  Beth kisses my jaw. “Leave him alone. He’s prickly.”

  “You’re way too kind to him.”

  She laughs under her breath. “I promise I wasn’t before. But it doesn’t matter now.” She turns her attention to Lachlan and they share a long, meaningful look. “Right?”

  He nods gruffly. “Right.”

  “We’re living in the moment,” she says lightly, taking a sip of wine. “Enjoying a long weekend together. That’s all that matters.”

  Living in the moment is usually my motto. Apparently all it takes to shatter that is one pokey comment from Lachlan about me being soft with Beth.

  “What else do you want to enjoy tonight?” I run my fingers up her neck and into her hairline where it makes her shiver.

  She taps her index finger against the sweet swell of her lower lip. “Should we see what sort of kinky toys Lachlan’s hidden around his house?”

  I didn’t see that coming, and neither did Lachlan. The tongs clatter against the barbeque and we both swivel our heads toward the man of the house. He’s not blushing, exactly, but he’s affected.

  “You do have stuff here, don’t you?” I flex my thighs, suddenly restless to play.

  He clears his throat. “Yeah. Some.”

  I look at her. “What are you thinking?”

  She takes another sip of her wine as she takes in both of us. Her eyes are dancing. “What do you like to do, Hugh?”

  I tug on the silky strands of her dark hair and think about that question. “That shifts depending who I’m with. I’m always dominant, though. You’ve gotten a taste of that.” Lachlan makes a wounded noise from by the grill and I wave my glass at him. “Settle down. I didn’t do anything inappropriate.”

  He stretches to the full extent of his impressive height and gives me a solid glare. I see how he’s a good dungeon monitor. “Maybe we should talk about this over dinner. Lay out some really clear boundaries.”

  “Boundaries are so hot,” I say dryly and Beth pokes me in the chest. “Okay, fine.” I rub my fingers against her scalp and she rolls her head into the touch. “Up you get, beautiful. I’ll go set the table and we can talk like grown ups.”

  He’s right, of course. I’d followed Beth’s lead and kept our relationship vanilla so far, but if we intend to seriously add in some kink, we’d need to know a lot more about each other to make it work.

  Three way kink.

  The possibilities are exhilarating.

  As I set the salad in the middle of the table, I catch a glimpse through the window of Beth leaning into Lachlan’s side. He kisses the top of her head. It’s sweet.

  Protective.

  They look good together. His arm slides around her waist, pulling her in tight and her head tips up, her face lighting up as he makes her laugh.

  I shove away the discomfort in my chest. This is fine. This is better than fine, because once this is all over, they might find a way to hang on to that—and no matter what, I’d want that for them. A forever kind of happiness, nothing that burns too bright or too hot. Something stable and warm.

  Grown up.

  Beth comes in first, carrying the wine bottle and their two glasses. Lachlan follows with the steaks.

  She waves the bottle. “Who wants a refill?”

  I shake my head. “Not if we’re going to play.”

  Lachlan sets the meat platter down and reaches for me, his grin big and broad. “Now who’s being Mr. Responsibility?”

  “You like that?”

  He bumps against me, leaning in for a kiss. “Yeah.”

  “Excellent. My seduction plan is working.”

  When we break apart, Beth’s eyes are big and she’s squirming. I tug her close. “And I think you liked that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she breathes before I cover her mouth with mine.

  It’s total hyperbole that I now taste like him, but it feels that way, like each kiss we share gets more complicated and layered as we do this dance around the triangle we’re playing with. The way she kisses me after I kiss him is…hungrier. Dirtier.

  I cup her cheek and hold her against me for a moment when we stop. “Okay. Time to eat.”

  She drags in a ragged breath, and slides past me into a chair Lachlan’s holding for her.

  The steak is a perfect medium rare and I comment as much.

  Lachlan grins. “Remember that guy in Moose Lake…what was his name, John? Tom? The one who kept insisting we needed to do a big steak night?”

  “The one who always bowed out of poker night halfway through because he didn’t want to buy in another twenty bucks.”

  “Yeah.” He turns to Beth. “This guy talked up his new grill like it was a muscle car. So we all bought steaks and beer and went to his place one night. And the asshole turns them to lumps of coal.”

  She groans. “What a waste.”

  I nod. “Yeah. And on constable salaries, too. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.”

  Lachlan puts his fork down and claps his hand against his leg, howling. “That’s right!”

  I make a face. “The fucker pulled out a bottle of ketchup and tried to pretend that would make them better.”

  Beth giggles. “Oh, God. Actually…” She presses her lips together for a second. “I shouldn’t say anything. It’s mean.”

  “Mean?” I spread my arms wide. “Bring it on.”

  She holds up a finger. “You’re sworn to secrecy.”

  “Definitely.”

  “When Gavin was in Washington last month… President Best did the same thing. Well-done, dipped in ketchup. A filet mignon.”

  “No.” I’m horrified.

  Lachlan coughs. “No comment.”

  Beth rolls her eyes. “We’re going to talk about nipple clamps next, but we can’t gossip about world leaders? The German Chancellor is picky about her toast.”

  “Toast isn’t the measure of a man. Or a woman,” he hastily adds, and Beth winks. He laughs. “And I don’t have any nipple clamps.”

  She pouts.

  “Disappointed?” I ask.

  She grins. “Only because I wanted to use them on you.”

  “That’s not my kink,” I say smoothly. “Is it yours?”

  “No.” She says it swiftly, instinctively. “Oh! Look at that. I don’t think I like nipple clamps. Unless Lachlan…”

  He waves his hand in the air. “I’m good. Feel free to pinch me, but fingers only. I like the human touch.”

  “Okay.” She holds his gaze then, the heat ramping up quickly, and holy hell, yeah, I want to see that. I want to tell her what to do, how to hurt Lachlan ju
st enough to make him squirm. How to boss him and tease him and make him moan. “What else?”

  “I…” He laughs under his breath and slides a quick glance my way. “Hugh was my first experience with someone really dominating me. He’s got a special touch. I haven’t explored that since our…”

  Affair? Fuckfest? Clusterfuck of unspoken feelings? All of the above, really. I throw him a bone. We’re having fun this weekend, nothing else. “Since Moose Lake?”

  “Yeah.” He shifts on his chair. “It opened my eyes to a whole new level of kink. I’d played a bit before, but nothing like that. When I moved to Alberta, I got more involved in the world. For almost a year, I just went to social things. Fully clothed. Didn’t find anyone…” This time he doesn’t leave me hanging. He looks me right in the eyes. “I didn’t find anyone who yanked my chain the way you did. So I started to explore other things. Figured out I like service. Which is kind of obvious in hindsight.” He laughs gently. “Kink often is.”

  “Service.” Beth’s brain is going a mile a minute. “So whatever we want?” She gestures at me, then back at herself. “That’ll make you happy?”

  “Well, I like that. But there’s a lot more to it. Service topping isn’t the same thing as playing inside an intimate relationship. I don’t want to top Hugh.” I snort, and he laughs. “See? And he wouldn’t like that, either. But I could top you.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Do you want to?”

  He shrugs. “If it pleases you.”

  Her gaze is unsure, but the flush in her lips, the change in her breathing…I think she’d like that.

  Lachlan’s paying attention, too. He leans in. “It’s important to me that people’s first times be safe.”

  “Like at the holiday party?” Beth asks.

  I shove a piece of steak in my mouth to keep from pointing out that this whole just having fun thing would be a hell of a lot easier if we didn’t have bucket loads of history between us.

  Lachlan carefully nods. “Yeah. I wanted to make sure that was safe for you.”

  She lifts her chin. “You kind of spoiled the vibe.”

  I almost choke, and I grab my napkin. Shit.

  Lachlan doesn’t blink, though. “No. That’s what it’s often like.”

  “Oh.” A frown tugs her eyebrows together. “Then maybe flogging isn’t my thing.”

  Ha. I doubt that very much. I wait for Lachlan to say what I’m thinking, but he stays quiet.

  Fine. I cross my arms and lean back. “I think what we need to do is undo some of the assumptions you’ve got about kink.”

  She snaps her attention to me. Her eyes are bright. Eager and ready to be corrected. My dick responds accordingly.

  “Like what?” She sets down her cutlery and laces her fingers together.

  “Domination and submission doesn’t need to be adversarial. In fact, it rarely is.”

  “But you and Lachlan…”

  I grin. “Yeah.”

  “You snap at each other.”

  “And it makes our dicks hard.” I get up and round the table. I smooth my hand over the nape of her neck and take her wine glass, setting it aside before I lean in and brush my lips against the curve of her ear. “But you are to be treasured. Completely different.”

  She inhales shakily. “I’m not good at letting go of control.”

  “We’ll take it slow.”

  “Maybe I’m a top.”

  I doubt that very much. “Even Dommes need to learn how to bottom. Let’s take it one experience at a time until you figure out what you like and what you don’t.”

  “What if…” She’s looking across the table at Lachlan, but I’m right behind her. I can feel the nervous tremor run through her body. “What if we don’t like the same things?”

  Lachlan’s hand curls into a fist. “We will.”

  I settle my hands on her shoulders. “We know we’ve got some decent chemistry, right?”

  She dissolves into relieved laughter. “Right. Yes.”

  “So now we just need to find out if you like being spanked, too.”

  She gasps. “No.”

  “I gotta tell you. When you say no, that makes me want to do filthy things to you.”

  She twists her head around and glares at me. “Pervert.”

  “Guilty as charged.” I kiss her full on the mouth. “Finish your dinner. And give Lachlan your olives, he loves them.”

  Lachlan raises one eyebrow and gives Beth a concerned look. “You don’t like olives?”

  “They’re not my favourite thing. But I can eat around them, no problem.”

  He shakes his head. “We can leave them out next time. I should have asked. Is there anything else you don’t like?”

  “Besides nipple clamps,” I interject, teasing her.

  “I really don’t think I’m into pain,” she mutters.

  “I don’t like liquorice,” he continues mildly, ignoring how I’m trying to steer the conversation back to sex. But seriously, who wants to talk about food preferences when we could talk about banging preferences instead?

  “Oh, so it’s fine not to like liquorice but we can’t mock someone for eating steak with ketchup,” she says not-at-all-innocently.

  “Beth…”

  She rolls her eyes. “Yes, Lachlan?”

  “Enough,” I growl. I’d like to pull out my cock, now fully erect, and suggest something better to go in her mouth than backtalk and sass.

  But Beth would be just as likely to give me a good nip for presuming too much. Maybe one day I can convince her to let me be in charge for an entire day, blow job manner lessons and all.

  “Let’s get back to the more important question at hand. How do you know you wouldn’t like a spanking?”

  She looks back at me. “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt if you didn’t want it to. But you’re right. Maybe not a spanking tonight. Maybe we’ll wait until you’ve actually been a bad girl for that.”

  Okay, I’m only a halfway decent person. And I can’t resist the squeak of surprised outrage. It fucking turns me on.

  I catch her by the wrist when she lashes out at me with her pointy, bossy little finger. I kiss the waggling point and wink at her. “Tonight, Lachlan’s going to show you the difference between being flogged for fun at a play party, and being flogged by someone who’s been inside you.”

  “Lachlan?” Surprise rocks across her face. “Not you?”

  I look over at him. He’s not surprised. And he’s definitely pleased.

  “Yeah. Lachlan. And I’ll be calling the shots. You will be doing exactly what I say. We’re going to work on your trust.”

  “Flogging as a team building exercise?”

  Yeah, it might be. We’re going to need to be a team, the three of us. At least until they decide they’re better off as a team of two. That’ll be right around the time one of them gets a wedding invitation and needs a date.

  Date.

  Singular.

  That leads to mate, singular. And I’m not the mating kind.

  I’m the long weekend of debauchery kind, and fuck it, I’m going to be the best there ever was. “You bet your hot little ass.” I point to her plate. “Eat up.”

  24

  Lachlan

  I use an old hockey bag for my kink stuff. It’s easily transportable, and is disguised in plain sight.

  Plus, over the past ten years, I’ve amassed quite the collection. In the four years I was stationed in Alberta, I dove into Edmonton’s kink scene as a way of finding my way post-Hugh.

  I learned about ropes and cuffs. All the ways people liked to be tied up, tied down. Tied up in knots, emotionally and physically.

  I learned about pain and pleasure, and started to make sense of what was so good about what I did with Hugh.

  None of it touched what we had, though.

  So I gave up hunting for someone to push me to my knees. I scratched my itches in other ways—through service and care.

>   It’s been a long time coming, me using this collection of stuff in a truly intimate way.

  After dinner, I pull out the hockey bag. I sift through the neatly sub-divided contents. Rope bundles, smaller bags of cuffs, some still-in-their packages one-time-use vibrators. I want the leather roll that houses my small flogger collection.

  Beth crowds in beside me as I run my fingers over the options. I want a soft, gentle toy for her tonight. Something that will warm her up as it lands on her bare skin. The right tool to move her from mildly interested to definitely hooked.

  “That looks soft,” she says breathlessly.

  I nod. “It is. Similar weight to the one Brandon used on you at Max’s. It’ll feel different on your bare skin, though.”

  “Bare?”

  “You can leave your panties on.”

  “What fun is there in that?” Hugh asks as he joins us. He wraps his arms around Beth and kisses her neck. “You don’t need training wheels, do you?”

  I give him a dark look. “Let her ease into it.”

  “But I want that leather caressing her everywhere,” he says silkily.

  She shivers.

  I shrug. “Up to her. Not you.”

  “Everything is up to me,” he says, completely undeterred. “You should take off your shirt, for example.”

  Half way to naked? That sounds like a great plan. I pull off my t-shirt and toss it onto the couch, then I grab some condoms from my travel pack—right next to my first-aid kit, because I’m a responsible kinkster—and I pocket two before handing the others to Hugh.

  Then I tug Beth out of his arms and peel her out of her clothes, leaving her underwear on. She gives me a nervous look that gets my blood humming, then wiggles out of them herself.

  Even better.

  Once she’s naked, I arrange her over the arm of the couch, bent at the hips with her legs spread enough to afford me a spectacular view of her glistening pussy.

  “Find a comfortable position for your hands in front of you and keep them there. If they move, it’s the same as a safeword and I’ll stop.”

  I settle in behind her and gently drag the falls of the flogger up the back of one leg, then the other.