Sexual Healing for Three (19 page)

145

want to leave them, though she knew it was the emotionally healthy thing for her to do.

She wanted them, had never been so greedy for anything, much less two men, in her life. And she knew they wanted her too. It was a heady trip being wanted so intensely, being at the center of two men’s simmering lust.

It would have been so easy to take them by the hands, lead them back into Chance’s private little room and allow them to take the edge off. Except that she felt much more beneath the surface than just lust.

She felt their emotional baggage like a weight pressing against her chest. She felt the pain of losing their parents. She felt their loss.

Even as she thought it, their heartbeats stuttered, and Donna fisted their shirts spread across their hard, broad chests—Russ’s a soft cotton T-shirt, Chance’s an expensive blend button-down—their clean, musky scents grounding her in their reality, bringing her closer to their souls, bringing her closer to their past.

Donna gasped at the mini film playing before her mind’s eye. She thought she might have been suffering from remnants of her moments with Chance, sharing his consciousness before the pictures started flashing back and forth between a young Russ holding and rocking a battered and bruised woman in his arms while they sat on a sofa, to a young Chance cradling the same battered and bloodied woman in his lap as he sat outside on the pavement.

Tears sprang to her eyes, leaked from her closed lids, and warmed her cheeks when she heard the cries of each boy, begging for the life of their mother, begging for her pain to stop, begging for help that never came.

How many children had she rescued from the same scene? How many battered women like Russ and Chance’s mother had she helped? How many women like their mother had she not been able to help and consequently lost?

She used to think
she
had a lot of baggage. She
knew
she did with her unrelenting negative view of men. But she didn’t have any of the 146

Gracie C. McKeever

family issues that Russ and Chance carried around. With a battered woman, she was more than open to lend her emotional support.

Against her better judgment and professional wisdom she sometimes got personally involved in some of her charges’ cases, visiting them when they were settled in their new lives, long after the upheaval of their ill-fated, violence-ridden marriages.

She didn’t think she could handle the same emotional baggage and scars in her lover, didn’t think she had the strength for that sort of pain and psychological damage, certainly couldn’t have enough left over after dealing with her charges every day at Safe Haven.

What a sad state of affairs and how ironic when she turned her back on two people in need, two people who genuinely needed help and about whom she genuinely cared.

Donna opened her eyes to peer up at each man and remembered telling Chance earlier that she had learned a lot from her gifted sister and brother, but apparently she hadn’t learned enough to deal with this situation—Chance’s powers and his and Russ’s tortured souls.

She hadn’t learned nearly enough to deal with these.

Donna released them, shaking her head as she backed away from them. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry, I can’t…”

* * * *

Russ followed Donna’s hasty retreat, eyes wide before he grabbed Chance by an arm and dragged him back into the room he and Donna had recently vacated. He closed the door firmly behind them, stopping just short of slamming it.

“What did you do to her, Chance?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Did you use...your abilities?”

He saw the hurt in Chance’s eyes as soon as the words were out of his mouth but knew, even if he wanted to, it was too late to take them back.

Sexual Healing for Three

147

“They’re a part of me, Russell. It’s not as if I can bury and forget about them like they don’t exist. I can control them, but not eliminate them.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You’re saying a lot of things today that you don’t mean, aren’t you?” Chance tried to push by him, but Russ didn’t budge. “Do you mind?”

“She’s been hurt before. Badly.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

The fact that Chance knew she had been hurt, and probably exactly
how
and by whom, stuck in Russ’s craw. Chance’s abilities as they concerned this little affair-that-wasn’t gave him a decided advantage over Russ where communication with Donna was concerned, an advantage that average men dreamed of—being able to get inside the mind of a woman. And even though he knew his brother wasn’t the type of man to use his gifts indiscriminately, the fact was he had them at his disposal.

“She’s not a one-night-stand kind of woman,” Russ mumbled.

“You think I don’t know that too? And who said anything about a one-night stand? I’m in this for the long haul.”

“You haven’t been before.”

“That’s a cheap shot, Russ, and you know it.”

Russ didn’t answer, just stared and held his ground. His brother was right, and he knew he was being unfair, using Chance’s youthful indiscretions against him. His brother also wasn’t the type of man to abandon someone in need, wasn’t the type of man to just run out on a woman without a reason.

It made him feel just a little smaller when he considered what had made
him
finally leave his wife—self-preservation.

Was that why, in all this time, he had never heard anything about a woman being in Chance’s life? Had his brother had some bad experiences and just decided he was better off without anyone, or did he just stay away from women on general principal, knowing it was 148

Gracie C. McKeever

easier to keep his secret if there was no one around to tell? Was fear of discovery what had taken him so long to make a move on Donna?

As if in answer to Russ’s ruminations, Chance whispered, “I’ve wanted Donna since long before you came into the picture.”

Russ didn’t need to be reminded of how far behind in the game he was or how much catching up he needed to do to become as familiar with Donna as Chance already was.

Damn it, why was he making this into a competition? Making his brother out to be the enemy now when they had been in agreement just the other day?

That was before he had seen Donna and Chance together. That was before he’d seen his brother’s hand on her thigh and the attractive way her peaches-and-cream complexion pinkened beneath Chance’s attention.

Russ sighed and forked a hand through his hair, angry with himself for giving into jealousy and frustrated at the situation that was forcing him to virtually make a choice between his brother and the woman he knew could assuage the fire that had been raging in his soul long before he could put a name to the twisted desires he harbored.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I thought I could handle this.”

“I think Donna thought she could too. But in addition to not being a one-night-stand kind of woman, I don’t think this unconventional scenario we’ve all been thrust into is exactly her cup of tea either, no matter what her sister thinks.”

Russ didn’t want to, but he had to ask. He and his brother had been apart for a long time. He didn’t know what sort of philosophies his brother had adopted in addition to the New Age religion he followed. Add this to the generational gap between them, and who knew what his brother was and wasn’t into.

Sexual Healing for Three

149

Could it be any more or worse than what
you’re
into?
“What about you, Chance? Is this scenario your cup of tea?”

Chance flushed, lowering his long-lashed lids like a guilty little boy. “I’m not sure, but I’m willing to do what I have to to make Donna happy.”

Russ agreed, but looking into Chance’s sculpted, smooth face reminded him of just how much younger than him Chance was—

younger, more naïve, and probably a lot less jaded. Sure, he was a man and had almost certainly done and seen some things that Russ would never do and see, just as Russ had done and seen things he never wanted his brother to know. But Chance was still his baby brother, no matter how much of an adult he was now or how old he got.

He wondered if Chance still had the nightmares.

Speaking to him the other day hadn’t been as enlightening as it could have been, just the two of them catching up on what the other had been doing in recent years. Chance had glossed over most of his time spent in the Peace Corps, didn’t at all touch on what had made him come back to the States to become a doctor, but Russ had a feeling it had been something momentous, probably traumatic. And when Chance had asked him about his time in the service, Russ hadn’t mentioned his introduction to the world of BDSM by a Marine buddy, nor had he mentioned his frequent visits to a club that specialized in the fetish. He focused his conversation on his trip back, when he had settled down to make a home and a life with Suzie.

Russ had seen the admiration in Chance’s eyes then, the longing and loneliness when Russ spoke of his ex-wife and kids. What would he think if he knew that every day of his good-but-average married life, staying away from the dark side that nourished his soul, Russ had died a little inside? What would Chance say if he knew his brother was a freak?

Thinking about it now, he wondered just what he would do if Donna
was
willing to go along with this threesome. How would he 150

Gracie C. McKeever

keep a rein on his hungers with Chance in the picture? How would he keep that side of his nature a secret?

Domination and submission wasn’t just about the control one person exerted over another and the other’s acceptance, though it was a large part of what went one between a Dom and a sub. D/s was, at its core, about honesty and trust—the trust each party relinquished to the other. At its best and most intense, the submissive put not only her pleasure and happiness in her Dom’s hands, but her life. At its twisted and worst, it resembled something like what had been between Russ’s mom and stepfather—a control freak man bent on violence to keep his
partner
in line and a woman and enabler too afraid to say no for fear of being deserted and left alone.

Russ didn’t want Chance to see the Dominant side of him and get the wrong idea or worse, have flashbacks to a father he barely knew except through flickers from his brother’s memories. But how was he supposed to avoid Chance finding out about him in an intimate setting sharing a woman they both wanted to please and protect?

The main reason he wanted to be with Donna was because he knew he could be himself with her and not be ridiculed, that he sensed something in her he needed and craved, and he had something in him that he knew she wanted and needed. They were a match.

Where did this leave Chance?

Where did it leave all of them?

Sexual Healing for Three

151

When Donna stepped through her apartment door, she had but one thought on her mind—a relaxing, hot bath with a scorching romance to keep her company. Paperback or one of her e-books on her Sony Reader, didn’t matter as long as it was something hot.

After her encounter at the hospital, she
needed
a cold shower, but in her heated condition, it wouldn’t stay cold for long or cool her off.

The heat she was in wasn’t something that the outside temperature could help. She was warm to her core. Warm and wanting and she needed to hold on to the sensual vibe for as long as possible since she didn’t know when she’d stumble upon it again.

Donna shrugged out of her light trench, toed off her pumps, and hung her keys on the pegboard behind the front door after she locked it.

Padding through the apartment, she disrobed further until she reached her bedroom in just her panties and bra, not even bothering to check her messages or flip on the halogen lamp beside her much-loved recliner.

She needed to wind down in the worst way and didn’t want to know what was going on in the outside world right now. Whoever had called could wait.

Donna trudged back into the living room to check on and feed her fish. At least they were a more calming influence than a blinking message light that she refused to acknowledge until she was good and ready. She knew it was Angela. She had been ignoring her sister’s calls to her cell since she had left the hospital to go back to Safe Haven.

152

Gracie C. McKeever

She could only imagine what her sister had to say, and in the mood she was in, she didn’t think she would take very kindly to being told what her next move should be to secure her future with Chance and Russ, a future that was highly debatable as far as Donna was concerned.

She hated running and hiding, but she was just too tired to deal right now. If it wasn’t for the fact that she really did feel perfectly fine, with no headache or nausea or other aftereffects of her earlier attack, she would have thought she was having a relapse. But Chance had taken care of her too well for that. Chance had healed her.

Donna was still a little disturbed by the ramifications of that little fact hours after the incident, still a little doubtful that she hadn’t hallucinated the scene in the hospital after she had thrown up and passed out—or more accurately, after she had been put to sleep.

She shivered at the concept. The idea of being totally vulnerable and at anyone’s mercy, especially a man’s, was totally alarming to her. It didn’t matter that the man was a trusted and skilled physician, a professional. But it did matter that it had been Chance, and she knew in her heart that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her on his watch. But what mattered even more to her was that she was attracted to him, dangerously and irrevocably attracted to the man who’d held her consciousness in his hands and linked with her gray matter.

The phone rang, and when Donna leaped a foot in the air, she realized just how jumpy she still was after Luther’s attack.

She checked the caller ID and, sure enough, Angela’s number glared at her.

Donna made an about-face and headed to the kitchen, where she retrieved a glass from the cupboards and a bottle of chardonnay from her wine rack, and then carried her booty with her to the living room.