Make Me Yours Evermore, Book 3 (26 page)

“Until now.”

“Yes. Until now. I didn’t know they’d bring a shipment through while we were here. Didn’t know you’d be here full stop.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you hate me, think I’m a bottom feeder of the worst kind, I understand.”

I threw back the sheet, spun off the bed, and stood. “I have to get some air. Come outside. Both of you. We can lock Kat’s leash onto the chair.” Like always. I hesitated a second. Even now, I wasn’t forgetting what we had with her. Ingrained. A part of me, of us, whatever.

I ended up leaning over the back railing with Chris at my shoulder. The cool night air, the background insect sounds of the forest, and the wash of the sea, had calmed me a bit. Not enough though. Chris hadn’t said anything for a while.

The tension built up in my head. I blamed him. I didn’t blame him. I understood and some of it I didn’t. Not quite. I wanted to scream,
why
. I strangled the railing under my hand, like if I gripped it tightly enough I could make all this shit go away.

I gave in, shaking my head and muttering them all out in a row. “What the fuck, Chris? Fuck! Just…motherfucking…fuck.”

Silence again for a minute. “I’m sorry. I wish this hadn’t happened the way it has.”

“Me too.” I sighed. “Would you ever have told me?”

“No. I would’ve kept you out of it. Unless you asked me directly.”

“Yeah. Like I just did.” I bowed my head and stared at my toes, what I could see of them in the part darkness. “That you couldn’t lie to me…that part is what says the most to me.”

“Okay.”

Just like Chris. Letting me find my own way. Not trying to whitewash this.

“Fuck. Okay. Yeah. I’m done going nuts. I’m not going to throw you away as a friend. This hurt, but I can see how it crept up on you. Why you couldn’t say anything.”

He nodded, kept looking out across the wall to the beach. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Yeah, you do. You fucking do. I’d be shark food years ago if you hadn’t come out to me. You’d have to be Idi Amin and Hitler combined for me to tell you to piss off. Let’s just be…honest with each other from now on though? Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Sure. I can do that.”

“This boss of yours told you that Zoe was a present or something?”

“Yes. He wanted you to get your hands dirty, so he had a hold on you.”

“Shit. Really? And you wouldn’t have let me touch her would you?”

“No. I guess I did that part right at least.”

I thought some more, tapping my fingers on the railing. “You’ve had longer to think. What are we going to do?”

He inhaled loudly, exhaled. “I don’t know. They’re a big organization doing something illegal, something I consider far worse than what we’re doing with Kat, but I’ve never wanted to be Superman and somehow destroy them. Because we can’t. Scrim and those men are armed. We can’t report them to the cops because we’re in almost as deep. I don’t want to go to jail. Okay?”

While I was opening my mouth to reply, he raised a hand.

“Wait. I lied. I did want to be Superman. Lots of times. I just convinced myself it was stupid. I was right. But I still felt bad for a long time.” Chris shrugged. “I got desensitized, like someone watching people die in a war overseas on the TV. It became not real.”

“I understand. Now we’re both here, same situation. I don’t know what we can do either, except go with the flow for now.” I shrugged. “It’s not good.”

“No. If we reported this we’d go to jail for at least a year. Probably much longer. We’d be dead in six months in jail. Vetrov would see to it. We wouldn’t take him down anyway. I’ve never met him. I don’t even know where he lives for chrissakes.”

“Right. That does make it fucked up. Okay.” I guess we couldn’t save the world no matter how much this disturbed me. However, we could do something. I turned to him. “What about Zoe? Kat likes her a lot. I like her too. Can we at least get her away from them? How many women have they got here right now?”

He was silent a while. “What, you mean buy her, or them? I guess we could… Damn. No we can’t do that. You know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because Vetrov would never agree to us freeing them. They’ve seen too much.”

“Please!” For the first time since we came out onto the deck, Kat spoke. “You have to. Please?”

“Shush.” I waved my hand at her, ignoring the couple of quiet swear words she uttered. “We’re going to do what we can. Chris? What if we just ask about Zoe?”

“I suppose… I can ask. We can ask if we can buy her. But Andreas, again, we could never let her go. You understand that?”

“Shit.” Two women. I leaned on the balcony a bit more. “I don’t know.”

Kat was enough. I’d never planned to own anyone.

“He might say no.” Chris added quietly. “Sometimes he does things I don’t understand.”

I saw nothing for ages while I thought this through. “Let’s try, mate. Let’s try. Between us we should be able to rake up the cash. Whatever it takes.”

“Okay. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

I stayed out there long after Chris went back to bed with Kat. I needed some time alone to process this and Chris, to his credit, saw that and left me.

Most of my life I’d drifted from job to job. Engineers had a lot of scope with job opportunities if they chose a good pathway. With this, with Kat even, by herself, I was pinning myself down to wherever Chris was. You couldn’t get much closer a friendship than owning a woman…women maybe, together. I shut my eyes and breathed in and out with the sea. The salt-laden breeze sent cool tendrils across my face.

I could do this, whether we acquired Zoe or not. Besides, I didn’t think I wanted to be without Kat in my life anymore. She’d kind of sneaked up on me. I wasn’t sure it was love, how could it be? But it was some sort of symbiotic relationship like that seaweed stuff and the Nemo fish. Anyone who tried to separate us from each other, and that
us
included Chris, was going to feel the hurt.

With morning came the realization that life was about to get way more complex than I’d ever planned. And I
had
planned with Kat. I’d thought about it for a while before doing it. I’d had Steph in my care for days and once I saw how hers and Klaus’s and Jodie’s situation could sort itself out I’d begun to wonder about the
what if
factor. What if I did it for real?

We were eating at the breakfast bar with Kat sitting at our feet on a footstool. Bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes and toast. Andreas had made it. Kat wasn’t the best cook and Andreas had felt the urge to make breakfast anyway. Using my fork, I toyed with the last of the bacon on my plate.

Now, in one swoop, without barely thinking at all, Andreas wanted to add another woman to our household. Difficult enough keeping Kat in line. I still didn’t completely understand her. Zoe was an unknown. We didn’t know her past, or who she truly was, or how she’d react to us.

I only knew how she’d been with Kat and her behavior for those one and a half days – like a mouse cowering in a corner with the shadow of a predator fallen on it, waiting to get eaten. Except when Kat calmed her down enough. Then…the two of them together, kissing, licking, wriggling, and coming. Fuck, they’d made me wonder if my balls could explode into flame.

Her and Zoe. Her and Andreas. Anger simmered at the edges of my brain. Andreas I’d learned to handle. Her and another woman was setting me off again.

“Fuck.” I scraped back the stool and stooped to grab Kat’s hand. “Come with me. I’m going out to have a talk. You good with this?” I jerked my head toward the mess in the kitchen.

“Sure.” Andreas raised his eyebrows. He looked like I’d announced I was launching a moon rocket or something.

“Really sure?”

He only nodded and said, “Go.”

I don’t know what he thought I meant to say to her. Hell, I didn’t know. I just knew I wanted to. This was strange territory for me.

Out on the deck, the big round chair beckoned me. We’d both fit in there. I wanted this up close and personal. But not equal. I made her stop before it and I sat. “Take off all your clothes, Kat.”

She blinked at me and licked her lips. Nervous?

I nearly laughed. Even she saw that this was odd behavior for me. But she pulled her dress off over her head then went to undo the clasp on her red bra top.

Be gentler. Andreas had advised that when I’d mentioned my curiosity about how he handled her. I wasn’t sure, but…

“Wait. Let me.” With my hands at her hips, I turned her then I unclipped the top, slipping the straps down her arms. I made her pirouette again and admired her breasts with her standing there waiting. I never got tired of this, and I let myself smile as I caressed her.

Her breathing grew heavier, her nipples perked up. I hooked my fingers in the sides of her matching panties and shuffled them down her legs while I kissed the top of her slit.

“Mmm.” She swayed.

It would’ve been nice to be skin to skin but I’d kept my shorts and T-shirt on. I wanted to emphasize how
mine
she was, how vulnerable too. I liked having her naked while I was dressed.

I licked her once, tasting her, and when I looked at her, the warmth in my eyes was for more than just the sex. I wanted more. I’d seen it for days in myself, but sometimes it seemed like I was blind while her and Andreas had perfect vision.

I pulled her onto my lap and arranged her until we were both comfy with her head on my shoulder. Weeks ago she would’ve been spitting and scratching. Not that I was telling her that.

The shape of the chair made her cuddle in.

“Pretty woman.” I let my gaze travel down her curves, lingering on the best bits, which was most of her.

She opened her mouth to reply and I put my finger across her lips, pleased with how she halted and waited for me, even if she also made a small strangling noise.

“Don’t talk yet.” I nodded as I went on, thinking out what I meant. “I’m not a touchy-feely sort of guy. Though I always thought I communicated well with women.”

Her eyes grew big, disbelief evident in every line of her face. I frowned.

“Watching you and Andreas made me want to punch him at first, until I figured out I needed to do something.” I pulled her ankle in closer, arranged a strand of her hair on her cheek. “Then I saw you with Zoe.”

Damn, why was this so difficult? Pressure pumped up in me, squeezing higher. I was going to crack any moment.

And she waited. I hefted her a little higher on my lap. Procrastinating. Shit.

“You want to know why I took you, Kat? Because you’ve been an obsession for me since I first saw you getting spanked. Yeah, what a lie that was – you an easy pushover submissive.” I smiled at the way her eyes had fired up and tapped her nose. “I can read you. I know you haven’t given in.”

That pressure was still there. I watched her breathing, stroking her throat with my fingers and marveling that even if she didn’t realize it, she was close to submitting to me. I just needed some key.

Blind man. Blind man in the land of the seeing. I still couldn’t put my finger on it.

“When you were with Zoe I was almost as angry as I was when I saw you with Andreas. I wanted to take you away. Except she made you happy. You made her happy too, I guess.” It was true. Their happiness was like a bubble with me on the outside. “If we get Zoe, you have to let me in. Hear me? You have to submit. Fully.”

She shut down. One instant all open and accepting. Next, simmering resentment. I’d been so close.

“Not going to say it yet? I’m not ever freeing you, little Kat. You’re mine and Andreas’s. Once you admit that to yourself your life will be much better. Happier.” A thought surfaced and I grabbed for it, committed myself. “I do want to make you happy. If you need Zoe or whatever to be that, it’s done.”

Fuck. Wasn’t that easy. But though she didn’t exactly look one hundred percent in my court, she reached up and touched my chin.

I quirked up an eyebrow.

“Thank you. Though I know it’s selfish of me to want her safe when there are other women here too.”

It seemed I’d said something right.

“Don’t feel guilty. You can’t save the world. One thing at a time.” Her and Andreas were the same – wanting to be do-gooders. “I didn’t hear a Sir. Bend over my lap.”

“What? Oh. Bugger. I was distracted.”

“By?”

“Your sexy muscles?”

Tsking, I drew a fingernail down her neck, scoring it lightly, reminding her. I added more than a touch of threat to my tone. “Kat…”

We had a battle of wills until at last she wavered and dropped her gaze. Her reply was a whispered, “Sorry, Sir,” then she squirmed off me and lay down across my knees on her belly.

I decided to take it a step further. “Kiss the hand I’m going to spank you with.” I offered the back of it to her. She looked up at me.

Her pupils reflected the liquid darkness that signaled a submissive giving in. She kissed my hand. Her lips were so soft. With the palm of that same hand, I brushed down over her hair, to her back, to the swell of her bottom.

I circled the sweet spot on her ass with my palm. Her eyes closed and, as I watched, her lips parted – the sweet power rush of a victory.

I wanted to fuck her so hard right then. Nail her. Make her know who was the master. I reined it in.

“Extra swats for the swearing, Kat.”

Some things needed to stay the same.

I took my time and made it hurt.

A half hour later when I judged it likely Vetrov would be available, I took Andreas into the study and sent off the email.

I want to buy Z. The gift. What is the price?

We waited for a reply. Andreas on the upholstered chair while I stayed on the hard metal one. Kat was inside the cage in the bedroom. One day I prayed I could allow her out without one of us watching her.

“Going to say what you talked about?” His ankle was on his knee and he jiggled his foot as if nervous. I understood that. Vetrov made me nervous too.

“Should I?”

“Your call. If I can help?” He shrugged.

“Smug bastard.”

“Heyyy! I was only guessing. You seemed like you were going where no man had gone before. Or no Chris. Though the spanking looked fun.”