He hung up on her.
Dammit.
“What?” Reed asked from where he was laying on the couch.
“I have to take vacation time.”
“Then take it. You should visit your parents.”
“I know.” Her parents weren’t calling her every day anymore, but they were texting her. She knew they missed her, and she missed them.
It was time to face this next step.
She just had to figure out how.
* * * *
A week later, their lives had returned to some semblance of normal. Reed was back to work, taking out charters while grumbling about expensive insurance copays.
While they were heading to Vanessa’s house the next evening, Lyle finally found time alone with Reed to discuss his thoughts on the future. Lyle had bought Vanessa a king-sized bed, moving her bed into the garage for storage.
She still hadn’t gone through Tony’s room, and no one was bringing that topic up to her. The men knew she’d do it when she was ready. For now, she was still paying for his storage unit, those items also untouched.
The only thing she had done was sell his car, and that had only been three weeks ago. Someone at the club needed one, and she’d offered it to them for a fraction of its blue-book value.
When Lyle and Reed had asked her why, out of curiosity, she’d shrugged. “It feels right. He’d like that I did that.”
They wouldn’t fault her for that.
“I want to know what you think,” Lyle said as he drove, “about talking to Vanessa about making this permanent.”
“You mean collaring her?”
“I mean marrying her.”
Reed didn’t answer at first.
“Well?”
“She can’t marry both of us,” Reed said.
“I know that, but…okay, maybe not marry. Handfast, whatever. What do you think?”
“I think I want to spend the rest of my life waking up every morning next to her and you both,” Reed said.
Lyle let out a relieved breath. “Good. Me, too.”
* * * *
Reed hadn’t been sure how to broach the subject. He didn’t want Lyle and Vanessa to think it was some knee-jerk reaction to his close call.
It had been on his mind even before that, but he’d been hesitant to say it. Yes, the past two-plus months had been great, but it was still only two months.
Was that enough to build a life on?
Or was he willing to risk waiting when his heart had already settled the matter?
“Everyone” always preached taking time, going slow. Hell, he’d even preached it.
But the truth was, sometimes, you just knew.
This wasn’t irrational sub- or Dom-frenzy.
This was love. Real, true love.
She’d seen all the sides of them in a way they hadn’t even been able to show Basco at the time because of taking things slow.
They’d already lost one chance in their lives because of waiting.
Was he really going to risk losing another?
Hell, no.
When they got to her place, she already had dinner ready for them. Lyle and Vanessa wouldn’t let Reed help clean up, shooing him out to the living room.
When they finished and joined him and Carlo there, Reed broached the topic first.
“Lyle and I were talking,” he said. “On the way over here. We made a decision.”
Her brow furrowed. “Yeah?”
“We love you,” he said. “And we know this is complicated, but we want you to be a permanent part of our lives, however that needs to happen for you. Whether it’s you marry one of us, or we do a handfasting, whatever.”
She stared from him back to Lyle. “You do?”
“Yes,” Lyle said. “If you feel the same way about us.”
She nodded.
Lyle pulled her in for a kiss. That was a sight Reed loved seeing, watching the two of them together, the two people he loved, who were a part of his life.
Who were his life.
He never got tired of that.
* * * *
Vanessa was glad they’d brought it up first. She hadn’t figured out yet the best way to do it.
“But I have a request,” she said.
“Yes?” Reed asked.
“I want you two to get married.”
The men exchanged a glance. “Huh?” they echoed.
“It’s legal here now. It’s better if you two get married, to protect you. Then Reed, you can go on Lyle’s health insurance instead of what you have now. It only makes sense.”
“Is that what you really want?” Reed asked.
“I do.” She grinned. “No pun intended.”
“What about you?” Lyle asked her.
“What about me? We set up something with Ed. He’s used to dealing with that.”
“But you won’t have any legal protection,” Lyle said.
“I have you two. That’s plenty protection enough.”
“You know what I mean.”
“And I know what I mean. I trust you guys. This is what I want.”
The men exchanged a glance. “On one condition,” Reed said.
“What?”
“We get to meet your parents first, and you tell them who we really are.”
She nodded. “Deal.”
“And,” Lyle added, “we collar you before we get married. As our submissive.”
Her heart raced as she nodded. “Yes, Sir.”
Reed cupped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her in for a long, deep kiss.
“Are you sure you’re feeling up to doing this?” she asked.
He grabbed her hand and placed it over his crotch, where his cock had hardened. “Um, yeah. It’s been over a week. I’m damn sure.”
“To the bed,” Lyle ordered.
They moved and Reed laid down on the bed and crooked a finger at her. “If you’re so worried about me hurting myself,” he said, “you can give me a blow job while he takes care of you.”
Lyle had produced the Hitachi, which he held up with an evil grin.
She lovated that damn vibrator. That was a phrase she’d picked up from Abbey and Gilo—love-hate.
Lovate.
She also knew she was already wet, and her clit had started throbbing.
“Get naked, baby girl,” Lyle said as he went to plug in the vibrator. “We want to play. Oh, almost forgot.”
She suspected what he headed into the bathroom to get. Sure enough, he returned moments later with a towel, lube, and a butt plug.
Which he waved at her as he grinned. “Going to fill you up. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Duh.
Once she’d stripped, she climbed onto the end of the bed and knelt between Reed’s spread legs. He’d propped his head up with pillows so he could watch her.
“That’s it, baby,” Reed said. “You know what to do.”
With her eyes open and focused on his blue gaze, she slowly enveloped his cock between her lips, loving the soft, needy sounds he made, the way his chest rose and fell, the way his lower lip caught under his teeth.
“Dammit, baby girl, you’re sooo fucking good.”
Behind her, Lyle started lubing her ass with his fingers, making her moan as he took his time teasing her. Yes, her clit was really throbbing now. They hadn’t quite worked up to both of them fucking her at the same time yet, but they were slowly increasing the size of the butt plugs and toys they fucked her ass with in preparation of that.
And it was a rare night indeed when she didn’t get fucked without either a butt plug in place or one of them fucking her ass with a toy at the same time.
That it made her come harder than she’d ever imagined possible only strengthened the men’s resolve to take their time.
Because they realized her body would betray her. All they had to do was show her a butt plug, or start coming near her ass with their fingers, and her pussy was immediately
soaked.
That had amused them to no end and they took every advantage of the fact.
Lyle slowly fucked her with the butt plug. Once he finally seated it all the way inside her, he wiped his hand off on the towel. She felt the fingers of his other hand probing her pussy.
“Yep, one very wet baby girl,” he proclaimed.
“That’s because she’s our well-trained baby girl,” Reed said. “I think she needs some swats.”
She whimpered as Lyle started spanking her bare-handed, making sure to bump the base of the butt plug nearly every time. Another thing the men had learned, that her body had taken to this training as well, enjoying greater amounts of impact play. She still wasn’t a masochist, but putting her over a lap for a pre-blowjob spanking got her wet every damn time.
They’d started testing various silicone spatulas on her as the next step up, promising that they would work her up to a full paddling…and beyond.
Crops, canes—those were in her future.
If she wanted them.
Strangely enough, she found that she did.
After her ass was stinging and she felt her juices running down the insides of her thighs, Lyle took his position. He nudged her legs farther apart, swiping the head of his now-stiff cock between her pussy lips before sinking home deep inside her and drawing a moan from her.
Reed cupped her head in his hands. “Oooh, yeah. Keep doing that.”
“I’ll be doing this,” Lyle said. He flicked the switch on the vibrator and pressed it between her legs. It wasn’t possible for her to keep her eyes open because the orgasm felt too damn strong.
She nearly howled with pleasure around Reed’s cock as the vibrator drove her hard and fast over the edge.
“Yeah,” Lyle said, sounding hoarse. “We’ve got you now.”
She started rocking back and forth between them, filled at both ends with their cocks, her world contracting until it consisted only of them and pleasure. Yes, the past few months with them, she’d learned things about herself that she’d never known, never dreamed of. These two men had shown her how happy she could be.
All she had to do was reach out and take what they were offering her.
And she would. Gladly.
Because when she looked forward at the rest of her life, she couldn’t imagine it any other way, or without these two men.
Lyle slowly fucked her, holding back, keeping the vibrator pressed against her clit and wanting to wring every last ounce of pleasure out of her that he could. She knew what he was waiting for, to spot the telltale signs of Reed getting close to exploding so he could time it to finish with him. Now that she’d been dumped onto the nonstop orgasm rollercoaster, they knew they had her there for the duration.
“Our poor baby girl,” Reed said, his voice thick. “Every sweet hole filled, a nice red ass, and forced to come for her Sirs. Such a beautiful, good girl.”
She moaned, another round of pleasure washing through her. She didn’t know how these two men had managed to get inside her brain and figure out her body’s wiring, but she wouldn’t question it.
Never.
Because it felt too damn good, too damn perfect.
Lyle’s cock, with the added pressure of the butt plug filling her, hit every good place inside her pussy.
“In a few weeks,” Lyle said, “we’ll have you worked up to the biggest butt plug we have. You can take that, it means you can take our cocks.”
“And I can’t wait for the day I can pound a load into my baby girl’s ass,” Reed said.
Her pussy clenched around Lyle’s cock.
They’d already found out that she wouldn’t break if they pile-drived their cocks into her pussy. She loved being pounded into the mattress by them. She also loved watching one of them fucking the other’s ass like that, and when she’d asked them why they didn’t just do that to her, too, they admitted they didn’t want to hurt her.
When she’d asked them to work her up to that point, they’d both grinned and added that goal to their mental training list for her.
With every thrust, Lyle’s body bumped the butt plug, intensifying her pleasure and giving her a preview of what it would finally feel like to have both their thick, living cocks embedded in her pussy and her ass at the same time.
“Here you go,” Reed said. His fingers tightened, digging into her scalp in the way she loved as his cock grew even harder against her tongue. She swallowed him deep, ready for the first gush of hot cum he pumped out into her mouth.
Lyle switched off the Hitachi and picked up the pace, fucking her hard, fast, catching up with Reed until his load ended up in her pussy. Exhausted, she flopped onto the bed, her face pressed against Reed’s thigh.
“Sorry,” Lyle said, curling up behind her. “I don’t have a round two in me tonight.”
“Neither do I,’ Reed said, “but I sure needed that.”
“Me, too,” she said.
She managed to climb out of bed to remove the butt plug and get cleaned up. When she returned, she snuggled between them in her now normal spot, almost immediately starting to drift to sleep.
“Love you, baby girl,” Lyle said.
She tipped her head back to kiss him. “Love you, too, Sir.” She sat up and kissed Reed. “And you, Sir.”
He smiled. “Love you so much, baby. Don’t think you’re getting away from us.”
She snuggled in again. “Who says I’ll ever want to?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Yes, she felt nervous.
Nervous as crap.
It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, which they were spending with her parents. The first time she’d spent a holiday in Seattle, and the first time in over five years since she’d been out to Seattle.
And with her men occupying the seats on either side of her and having moved their trays to the upright and locked position, they reached over and each rested a hand on her thighs.
“This will be okay,” Lyle said from his seat on the aisle.
“Yeah, this is the way it should be,” Reed agreed from the window.
“I’m glad you’re both so sure.”
In her carryon she had Tony’s journal. She wasn’t sure if her parents would want to see it or not, but she’d brought it.
It was a part of him, of who he was.
She wasn’t about to let it go.
It had become her talisman, her guidebook.
She’d even taken pictures with her phone of some key passages and had saved them to her favorites, able to go back and reflect on them when she needed some of his wisdom.
She works so damn hard. I don’t know when to push more or back off trying to get her to remember that life isn’t just about work, that it’s about play. That work is what we do so we can play. And that she’s banked up more than her fair share of play time over the years. She’s overdue to take care of herself…
That was the one she’d been practically committing to memory over the past several days.
She’d kept the scheduled two full weeks off, and then added another two weeks at Christmas and New Year’s. Lyle couldn’t take all that time off, and Reed had built some down time into his schedule as well, but he still had a few charters.
She’d be going with him for some of them.
And for this first week, they’d be spending it in Seattle, having Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ house, but staying at a nearby hotel.
The two men had held fast to their condition that, until they met her parents, their wedding and her collaring were on hold.
Hence the massive source of her nerves right now. She wasn’t so much worried about if her parents would accept them or not, because she knew that would have no real effect on their day-to-day lives.
She did feel guilty that the first time she was traveling out here to visit them was to drop this bomb on them.
They checked into their hotel before she called her mom.
“Are you and your friends still coming for dinner?” had been the f
irst question out of her mom’s mouth.
She still couldn’t believe her parents hadn’t asked who, exactly, her “friends” were.
When they arrived at her parents’ house, they walked outside to greet them with hugs.
Nervously, she introduced them. “Mom, Dad, this is Lyle Bracken and Reed Hibbard.”
“Nice to get to meet you in person,” her dad said.
She didn’t understand that comment. “Huh?”
“Your friend, Tilly? She sent us the video from the memorial. There were plenty of times we saw these two men sitting there with you like guard dogs. I was hoping we’d one day get to meet them, and here they were.”
Her mom smiled. “I didn’t want to ask, but I had a suspicion that’s who they were.”
“Um…what?”
“Let’s go inside,” her dad said. “It’s chilly out here.”
Before leaving the hotel, she’d tucked Tony’s journal into the backpack she was using as a purse. She thought about it now and resisted the urge to take it out and hold it.
Once they were seated in the living room, her mom continued. “What we didn’t tell you is that we got a call from Kelly the Monday after that service.”
“That bitch,” Vanessa said. “What the hell did she want?” She hadn’t told her parents about throwing Kelly out of her house.
“That bitch,” her mom said, “put on a good act of pretending to be worried about you, about your state of mind, and that there were two guys with you. I told her she should mind her own goddamned business, that the best thing Tony ever did was divorce her, and then I hung up on her.”
“Um, wow.”
Her mom smiled. “Yesss. I’d been looking forward to that for a looong time.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I called Jenny, because I was worried about you and didn’t want to stress you out any more than you already were. She explained the two guys were very dear, trusted friends of Tony’s and hers, and that Kelly was a bitch. Which we already knew. We thought about flying back out, but unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly in the budget. I regretted letting you talk us into such a short visit, but it wasn’t like I could force you to let us stay, either.”
“We knew,” her father said, “that you needed to find your own way. You’ve always been like that. Even when you were a kid. Tony was the only one you ever really opened up to. For everything else, you walled up and withdrew until you were ready.”