Dangerously Happy (26 page)

“So, I guess one thing―a big thing―I get out of it is learning not to be afraid of not having control. For an hour, two hours, I'm helpless, but at the end of it, I'm safe. I haven't been hurt. Every time I go through that, I feel a little safer in this life where none of us can ever really be in control.”

“
And after Jared?”

“
Did I submit myself to anyone else’s domination? Yes. Have I let anyone else tie me down? No. Never. I’ve never trusted anyone enough. Not just that they wouldn’t go too far, or that I would somehow undo the good that Jared and I had done together, but it also just takes an immense amount of trust to be that vulnerable with someone. To basically let them gaze down at your wounded soul. You’re the only other person I’ve ever felt close enough to, for that.”

I was hesitant to ask, because I knew I could never do what Jared had done, and doubted I could even help Dario pick up where he and Jared had left off. “And you still need it? Still want it? That cathartic suffering?”

“
I don’t need it the way I did then. The wound’s been lanced. It’s not poisoning me the way it was back then.” He looked at me for a minute like he was weighing the rest of his answer. “But I do miss it. I guess without it I feel a little . . . undernourished. Like there’s a vitamin missing from my diet.” He searched my eyes, then gave me a soft, warm kiss. “But I’m also okay without it. And I would rather go without than push you into doing something that you’d rather not do. I’d rather go without than have you do it only as a kindness to me.”

I tried not to sound as concerned as I felt. “Dario, love, how can I deny you that, now that I know what it does for you?”

Another sweet kiss. Then that gaze, holding me. “Don’t doubt this, because I’m sure of it. With Jared, I had the bondage. With you, I have the honesty, you know what happened to me, and I need that more than I ever needed the other thing. We’re wonderful as we are. I’m wonderful with you was we are. I promise.”

A few days later when I got home from work, Dario was on the sofa with someone I didn’t recognize. I’m ashamed to admit it, but my last meeting of the day had been canceled and I was back almost two hours earlier than usual, and Dario and the stranger were sitting so close on the couch, my first thought—really, it was more of a
feeling
—was that I’d walked in on something. The human organism is amazing, whatever that lower-brain response is that floods your body with chemicals that make you tremble before you’ve had time to squeeze a “hello” out of your lungs.

“
Aidan. You’re back early.” Dario’s easy calm. “This is Xavier.”

I went over to shake his hand. Dario was practically wedged between this guy and the arm of the sofa, Xavier’s massive thigh pressed against, almost overlapping Dario’s. I was definitely interrupting something. I took a break from my jealousy just long enough to be thankful that he wasn’t one of those guys who prove their masculinity by trying to crush your bones with every handshake, because that probably would have been the end of my career on guitar.

“
Call me Xavi,” he said.

I admit it. I cast what I hoped was a subtle look at their groins, terrified I was doing to see two bulging hard-ons. But between Xavier’s retreating arm and the moving shadow it threw I couldn’t tell.

“
Well, I don’t want to interrupt, and I’ve got some work to do upstairs,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Xavier.”

“
You just got off work,” Dario said, a certain weight in his tone. “You can relax for an hour or two, can’t you?”

“
Maybe later.”

I headed for the stairs, but before I’d traversed the distance of the loft, I heard the familiar tread of Dario’s footsteps behind me. A brief touch on my arm. When I stopped and turned he asked, “Did you get my text?”

“
No.” I hope I didn’t sound as petulant as I felt. But I probably did.

Dario’s assured grin made me almost angry. His calm in the face of my flustered anxiousness. “I texted to let you know Xavi had dropped by, that we’d wait for you here, and then maybe we could all go out for drinks. Are you up for it?”

“
I don’t want to interrupt you guys.”

His grin turned into a smile. “You said that already, Aidan.” He took a step closer and, his back to Xavier and blocking the other’s view, he brushed the back of his hand against my stomach. Too quietly for Xavier to hear he said, “I want to give you a welcome-home kiss. But I won’t if you don’t want me to in front of Xavier.”

“
Of course you can,” I said, the sudden depletion of adrenaline leaving my voice strangely quavery.

Sweet, warm smile. Tender gaze. Soft lips lingering, little taste of tongue. “Love. Unless you really have to work, please come join us.”

We went to The Mint, where by chance we caught a fantastic bluegrass performance. Dario was as into it as I was, transfixed by the blur of the flying fingers, the virtuoso picking of the woman on banjo. Xavier seemed more interested in Dario. Or in the dynamic between Dario and me. I was guessing he hadn’t seen the kiss, because he seemed to note every gesture, every look, every struggle to exchange words under or over the strum and twang of the music as if someone were going to demand a detailed report and incisive analysis later. I don’t think I did it to prove anything to Xavier, but I admit that when I took Dario’s hand—which, I realized later was the first time I’d held hands with him in public—I did it self-consciously, hyperaware that Xavier would notice, and that he would draw his conclusions from that small but intimate gesture.

Instantly Xavier gave us a conspiratorial grin, fixed his ink-black eyes on mine and said, “So, you’re to blame.”

“
For what?”

“
For Dario refusing—for the first time ever—to get on his knees for me.” He didn’t lean in to say it just to me. He shouted it across the table, his voice vanquishing the music. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed very possible the people at the tables closest to ours might easily have heard.

Of course I blushed, but I’m positive that under the green and pink theater lights of the venue, I got away with it for once. I looked at Dario, and was pleased, then . . . compelled, attracted by his perfectly assured, maybe even cocky grin. My steady, unflappable love, not thrown off even a hair by being spoken of like Xavier’s subservient slut, or by the sudden exposure of their sexual relationship.

I was pleasantly surprised, because instead of feeling the cold adrenaline of jealousy chilling my veins and tightening my gut, I felt the pleasant warmth of arousal flooding my cock and tingling my balls. What an image, Dario on his knees before that huge man who looked like the love-child of Xerxes from
300
and Drago from
Game of Thrones
. Kneeling to take his cock in his mouth? Or on all fours, waiting to be fucked? Both images made me squirm a little in my seat, and it felt deliciously perverse to be sitting in that crowded space, just ten feet from that woman beating her banjo into perfect submission, her skirt so short I’d been hoping through the entire set to catch a glimpse of her panties, feeling the flood and swell and throb of my cock.

“
And now,” Xavier said, “my one-track mind is going around and around in a whole other groove.”

“
What’s that, Xavi?” Dario asked, his steady gaze fixed on his friend. Former lover.

“
If you’re no longer heeling at my command, maybe Aidan here would like to make a present of you. Just for a few hours.” Xavier turned to me. “I don’t mind an audience. In fact, the thought of you watching me fuck your beautiful boy is already making my dick hard.”

I couldn’t tell which was winning the battle—my suddenly surging instinct to mount a defense against this titan threatening to storm my castle and ravage my beloved, or the cock-stroking arousal of the image of Xavier fucking Dario in front of me.

“
On the other hand, I’ve never been a particularly greedy man. Maybe you should host a Hawaiian Luau. I´ll gladly help you get him on the spit. We both know he'll be tender and delicious.”

I smiled because I was nervous. Or because I liked the taunting talk and didn’t want to shut it down just yet. “I literally have no idea what that means.”

“
No?” Xavier looked less intimidating when he smiled. It was actually an adorable smile that didn’t seem like it belonged with that herculean body. He turned to Dario. “You tell him what I mean.”

Another confusing surge of possessiveness mingled with arousal at the way Xavier issued that command, not in a bark demanding respect, but in a quiet, assured tone that suggested no one had ever failed to do as he’d told them.

Unlike Xavier, Dario leaned in close to keep the conversation just between us, and said, “Xavi is suggesting that you and he get me between you so one of you can fuck my ass while the other fucks my mouth.”

Once again Xavier was watching my face with that intent scrutiny of a secret agent noting every damning expression and gesture. I don’t know what face I was making—maybe he could see me blushing under those cotton candy colored lights after all—but his smile went from that of a king amused by his jester to that of a warrior cannibal about to devour his prey. Then he said, “Unless you want to be the Chinese handcuffs. I’ve always been curious to see Dario’s dominant side. Since I’ve never given him the chance to prove he has one when it’s been just the two of us.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. But one look at Dario and I knew Xavier was serious. Dario had just enough of a grin to prove that he wasn’t trying to shut down Xavier’s playful probing, and above that grin, Dario’s steady, watchful gaze gauging my reaction.

When we left, when we got to the car, I was about to get in the front passenger seat (because I’d drunk my way through our titillating, awkward evening out so Dario had designated himself driver) when Xavier slapped his hand down on the car, preventing me from opening the door, then pinned me against the car so suddenly and forcefully that from half way down the block I saw the doorman at the Mint watching us in case a fight was about to break out. Then Dario coming back around from the driver’s side. For a second I had the idea that Dario was going to shove Xavier back and tell him to cool it, but he just made sure I saw him there, I guess so I would know he hadn’t abandoned me to my fate at the hands of the cannibal Achilles, and stood there, steady as always, and obviously aroused as hell.

Xavier looked over at Dario for a moment, then fixed his eyes on me and—Jesus, it felt possessive—brushed the pad of his thumb across my lips. “Get in the back,” he said. “With me.”

I was stunned speechless. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to know whether I was tempted to say yes, or not. I was just suddenly caught in a riptide of guilty confusion and anxiety that I was somehow accidentally on the brink of cheating on Dario and stealing his lover. When I turned to look at him—I’m sure looking like I was about to cry or have some kind of panic attack—Dario gave me a calming smile and stepped up close to us, and put his hand on my waist. Then I realized his other hand was on Xavier’s waist, and suddenly I felt like I was in the middle of a threesome I hadn’t agreed to and wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be part of.

Dario said to Xavier, “We’re still new together. We’re not used to playing with others.” Then, to me, in his sweet, intimate voice, not the voice he’d used with Xavier, “But if you want to, you should get in the back. And I’ll do my best to keep my eyes on the road.” When I chanced a glance down, I found the bulge in Dario’s pants that I’d expected to see when I’d found him on the couch with Xavier that afternoon. “Or we can keep it all on hold until we get back to the loft, if you’d feel safer.”

“
Safer?” Xavier growled, pushing his hips forward, driving me back against the car. “Do I make you nervous?”

Dario stroked my hair, and fucking hell that sweet, gentle touch coming while Xavier ever so slowly rubbed his groin against mine turned my heavy, pulsing cock to steel in two seconds flat. Dario looked up at Xavier and said, “I’m the only man Aidan’s ever been with. But if he wasn’t feeling at least a little conflicted, he would have told you no three indecent proposals back.”

Xavier’s dark eyes fixed on me. No trace of a smile. “You’re fucking kidding me.” Low, breathy voice heavy with arousal.