Dangerously Happy (21 page)

I tightened my grip on her waist and her hips, locking her in place even while she tried to wriggle and writhe away as Dario worked the toy out of her ass, then made a point of letting her see that he was putting a condom on his enormous erection. She looked genuinely fretful as he pressed himself against her and she whimpered and struggled as he started working his cock up into her ass.

“
This,” Dario said, “is how you fuck, honey,” and he drove his cock into her with such force that she slid up the length of my cock, and back down again. Again. Again. Me not even moving, Dario’s vicious thrusts forcing her up and down my throbbing pole. I was waiting for her to say her word, to make it stop, but she just grunted and groaned, her chest flushed, her mouth open, her tits shuddering. Dario’s fingers catching her hair in his fist again, forcing her head back, “Give him your tits to suck, honey. Offer him your nipples. Are they sore after your flogging?”

“
Yes,” she said, her voice fraught, as she put her hand to the back of my head and pulled me to her.

I started sucking, her nipple immediately swelling and hardening between my lips, her aureola crinkling under my tongue as Dario went on ruthlessly pounding her ass, and I swear to fucking God she started coming hardly thirty seconds after I started nursing at that swollen nipple.

“
You dirty girl,” Dario growled, his own pending climax straining his voice, “you like it, don’t you? Getting both of your holes fucked at once? Riding him while he sucks your tit. Give him the other one, honey.” To me, “Suck harder. Make her whimper.”

She seemed to be thriving on the pain, on Dario’s humiliating taunts, still coming, or coming again as she proffered her other nipple, pressed taut in the V of her two fingers so it jutted forward for my mouth. I sealed my lips against the smooth white skin of her breast and sucked hard, rubbing my tongue over her rigid nipple. Dario went on mercilessly thrusting into her, shaking her desperate quivering moans from her, using her body to massage my cock on the verge of erupting.

“
Are you going to be good?” Dario asked, frantically fucking her.

I was on the brink of losing it, her little, “Yes” shaken out of her by another brutal thrust.

“
Are you going to be good?” he asked again and she answered again, sounding like she was about to cry but she was coming again, a desperate moan erupting from her throat mingled with Dario’s groan as he started to come and I finally gave in, let the last few jolts of Vera’s hot, wet body bouncing on top of me release the climax I’d been desperately holding off for minutes.

In the quivering, panting moments after, we held her gently between us, a close embrace, encircling, interwoven arms. For a long time she was still, except that she was trembling and breathing hard. Little by little her respiration calmed and slowed, and gradually her taut, shuddering body softened and went lax. When she finally stirred, we loosened our collective embrace, and I was a little afraid to look at her, afraid her expression would be full of reproach, that she’d look wounded, which would mean we’d gone too far. That I’d gone too far. But when she raised her face and met my eyes, she looked absolutely drunk on the pleasure she’d taken so greedily all night, and she gave me a smile that more than anything looked like one of surprised satisfaction, like a teacher handing back an A paper to a C student. Still smiling, she pressed a warm kiss to my lips. Then, reaching back to curl her hand against the back of Dario’s head as a gesture of embrace, which prompted him to plant a kiss on her shoulder, she said, “You two sure know how to spoil a girl.”

Later, when we were alone, I teased Dario, “I thought you weren’t going to fuck her.”

“
Well,” he said, grinning, “you’ve been so open-minded, I thought I should try being a little . . . flexible, too.”

I was almost afraid to ask. “Did you like it?”

His soft, bemused laugh. “Why? Did I seem miserable while I was fucking her and coming?”

“
You know what I mean.”

“
It was delicious. The whole night. Of course, I was mostly feeding off you and your pleasure.”

“
You know you don't have to do things like that for me. To keep me happy.”

That assured gaze. That mirthful grin. “I know that, love.”

We had one other marathon session, this time with me bound and gagged (but without the blindfold or headphones), with Vera reluctantly following Dario’s orders and occasionally getting flogged for carrying them out poorly. They both fucked me senseless. And, before her flight back to New York, we had one rather languid and very sweet lovemaking session, just Vera and me, while Dario watched. It would have been a week of blissful perfection except for the way things went over the weekend. Because Vera knew that we’d made a unique exception in letting her into our bed, and because she knew we were keeping our relationship a secret, she wasn’t at all shy about touching me, taking my hand, perching in my lap, and even coaxing me into a couple very public, very intense kisses. When I tried to get her to cool it a bit a couple of times, she just laughed and said that if I wanted to keep my big secret, having a beard at the shows was the best way to avert suspicion. As usual, Dario didn’t seem bothered at all, but I felt like shit. I told him so when Vera’d gone back to New York and he’d asked me, after taking me in his arms and kissing me sweetly, whether I felt good about the way the days with our guest had gone, or if I wanted to talk about anything.

“
Why do you feel bad about that?” he asked.

“
It just feels unfair, wrong, that you’re the one I’m with, you’re the one I love, but I feel like she and I were coming off as a couple while everyone else was around.”

“
My feelings aren’t hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“
How can they not be?”

“
They just aren’t. Don’t you believe me?”

“
It’s not like I think you’re lying. I just can’t understand. My feelings would be hurt.”

“
Aidan, I get you all to myself most nights of the week. We just spent a week playing with Vera to the point of utter exhaustion. And we’re part of this thriving, evolving, creative thing that happens every weekend. My life has never felt as full or as happy as it does right now. With you. I don’t need anything to be different. But it sounds like maybe you do.”

“
I’m not saying I’m not happy. You know I’m happy with you, don’t you?”

His calming, earnest smile. “I know.” A warm, sweet, lasting kiss. “I just get the feeling that it doesn’t work for you, keeping such a fundamental part of your life a secret. And there’s nothing I can do about that. That’s for you to work out, in your own time, in your own way. You just have to remember that it’s troubling you, not me.”

That night we made love very tenderly, taking our time coming back to the us that didn’t include Vera. God, I felt so in love it almost hurt. Every look he gave me, every smile, the sound of his voice, the way he touched me, every curve of his body, every contour of his skin felt created by some deity of love to draw me to him, to hold me captivated.

After Vera’s visit, bondage and domination became a much more regular feature of our sex life. It still surprised me, the effect it had on me, being held down, held still, and fucked as if I had no say. The mysterious, strangely arousing feeling of humiliation that coming provoked when he didn’t even touch my cock, but just used my ass, fucking me frenziedly seemingly with no regard for what I was feeling.

I didn’t mind that he never wanted to switch roles. Thrilling as it had been dominating Vera, I was even more turned on by the surrender of feeling helpless, controlled, dominated. But I did worry that it was because I’d fucked up that one time, that maybe I’d spoiled something that he would have wanted, otherwise.

“
It’s not that, love,” he told me when I asked him.

“
Is it something else?” More and more I had the feeling there was something going on that he was reluctant to tell me. A feeling that had been a faint and fuzzy shadow in the back of my mind way back when I’d screwed up that night I’d been so messed up.

“
It’s just baggage,” he said. “I’ll work on it. I don’t want you to feel like you’re missing something that you want. I want this, us, to be complete. Perfect.”

“
It is.” I kissed him, letting all my tenderness and want flow into that kiss. “I’m not missing anything, Dario. I mean it. I only bring it up sometimes because I got the idea, when we first talked about bondage, that you liked being the one who gets tied up, sometimes. So I keep thinking you’re the one missing something.”

“
I’m not missing anything, love,” he whispered, then kissed me, without ever telling me I was wrong about him liking being tied up. In the past. With other lovers. Not with me.

The music was going great. Contrary to my usual pattern, my prolific streak didn’t dry up in the wake of my surfeit of sex and happiness. Every week I surprised myself with a new piece of music that I was sure surpassed anything I’d written before. I was getting more and more comfortable performing on my own, not just virtuosity with the vocals and the playing, but playing off the mood of the audience. Seducing them. And even though, off and on, my solo thing had caused a bit of friction with the band for a couple weeks, somehow that dark energy got channeled into our music, and not only did we get better as a group, but the band was more fun to be part of than it had for a long, long time.

And the weekend shows were going better and better. Not that a lot more people were coming, or that I had any concrete ideas about where that whole thing was going, but little by little, with each passing weekend, the crowd that showed up for my solo show was changing. It wasn’t just the usual crowd that had come for the general art commune vibe, because they were friends or friends of friends of one of the groups or one of the artists, or who’d shown up almost by accident for my performance when what they were really after was one of the thumping, driving sets put on by Babel and Painful Friction and that had become the de rigeur style associated with the loft. Now, more and more, it was a crowd custom-grown on my weekly gigs. My music. They were there to hear me. And contrary to what I’d expected, the crowd didn’t dwindle down to half or a tenth of the number of people who showed up the other days for the bands. I'd even been invited to play at two decent clubs, and the turnout was so good the managers had already booked me for a couple more shows the following month, and suddenly—something I hadn’t expected or even imagined in passing—I was making almost enough money from my gigs to consider quitting my job.

“
Can I make a suggestion?” Dario asked. To my ear that question rang like an echo of his guidance during our play with Vera, and my whole body went suddenly, pleasantly warm. Dario grinned as if he’d read my mind, and teased me, “Ah, I’ve set your expectation too high now, and what I’d planned to say is bound to be a disappointment.”

“
I’d like to see you try to disappoint me.”

“
Flirt.” A kiss. “At the risk of leading you on again, come upstairs with me.” He didn’t lead me to the nest, but to the nearly unused area further back, empty except for stacks of boxes and a few vintage chairs, tables and lamps awaiting repair. “I’ve never known what to do with the rest of this, but now I have an idea. We should build you a den. A quiet, secluded place where you can work. Write. Hell, if you wanted to, we could even partition off a third of it for a sound studio so you could finally start recording. And your den could have one of those convertible sofa bed things.” I was looking around the space, trying to visualize how the layout he was talking about would work, but then I realized he’d been quiet for a while, that he was watching me. When I met his eyes I realized he’d been standing there waiting for me to look at him. “You could live here. Officially. You could get rid of your apartment. Stop paying rent. Quit your job. Be a musician full-time.”

“
You want me to live with you?” Happiness flooding my veins like a drug. But I was also stunned. Avalyn and I had gone out for more than a year before we’d even talked about moving in together.

“
You’d have your own space, your own room, so it would be plausible, you know, you’d just tell people you’re doing it to save money, so you can give your music career a chance.”