The Foster Family (43 page)

“Tell me,” he said softly.

“It’s nothing. Stupid.”

He squeezed me a bit and relaxed, brushing his thumb across the skin over my breastbone. “Nothing that makes you look like you just did is stupid or trivial, Kerry. Nothing that makes you want so bad you can’t keep it off your face is okay to hide.”

“You’ll think I’m a freak.”

“No.” He kissed my neck again and nuzzled. His stubble sent a shower of goose bumps over me, and I snuggled a little deeper into his embrace.

I tried to find a way to give him what he wanted, but no way of saying “You tossed my underwear into your laundry hamper” came out sounding anything other than creepy and weird. “I—it doesn’t matter.”

“Whatever it is, it matters.” Malcolm’s deep voice from the doorway made me jump, and my jump made Charlie’s comforting hold on me tighten.

I said nothing as we watched him undress, quick and efficient, and fold his clothes over the back of the chair, laying his pants over mine without a thought.

I swallowed, too hard, and brought Charlie’s attention back to me. “What? Kerry”—he rolled me onto my back and looked down, concern all over his face—“what’s wrong?”

“Nothing! It’s so—”

Charlie touched my lips with his finger and shook his head. “It’s real, and it matters,” he assured me.

“He put his pants on the chair with mine,” I said, knowing, just
knowing
it didn’t make any sense and not having the words to explain why it mattered.

And he did look confused as he glanced at the chair. “That’s what the chair’s for.” His grin was amused and indulgent. “You don’t think anyone actually sits in it, do you?”

I had known he wouldn’t understand, and I couldn’t explain what was just a gut feeling anyway.

“It blurs the line,” Malcolm said, climbing up from the bottom of the bed and hovering over us. “Between what’s ours and what’s his. He always washed his own clothes before.”

“He washed all the clothes,” Charlie pointed out.

“He washed ours, then he washed his. Never together. He served our meals but sat across the table from us. He sat in the armchair while we sat together on the couch. He slept in his own room. He borrowed our things when he needed to, but his own, he kept in his room. You put his pants on my chair, and suddenly the line is blurred.”

“I never drew any lines on purpose,” I said.

“I know. You get moved from home to home all your life, you keep your things separate. You keep yourself separate because you never know when you have to grab whatever you can, and it matters that you grab the important things.”

I nodded.

“Charlie puts your pants on my chair, in our room, and suddenly you think, ‘What if it all ends and those are the pants you have to have when it’s time to run.’”

“They’re just pants,” Charlie said.

Malcolm shook his head at him, a patient smile on his lips. “It isn’t about the pants.”

“It better not be about running, either,” Charlie muttered.

“It’s about staying,” I said. “It’s about letting the pants hang on the back of your chair because I know they’re there, and it doesn’t matter if they aren’t where I can see them, where I can grab them, because I don’t have to worry about needing to run.” I turned back to Malcolm. “It’s about there not being a yours and mine. Only ours.”

He smiled and nodded. “It’s a hard, hard thing to let go of
mine
and
me
and think
our
and
us
.”

“I want to be able to do that.”

Malcolm smiled. “One pair of pants at a time.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. It made me giggle and Charlie snort, and it brought out the most gorgeous smile on Malcolm’s face, and that made it okay. It meant someday in the near future when Charlie snapped at me in the grocery aisle and told me to suck it up and hang my pants on the chair, the whole line of people might look at us like we were crazy, but I would know what he meant, and it would be what I needed to hear.

It meant, when I opened the garage door a week from that night, looking for the tools I needed to fix the living room shelves that they had assembled but left empty because of the broken shelf, and saw the lamps, I almost didn’t go girly all over them. Or when I came back from Lissa’s shop the next day—Charlie and I took turns with the shifts she offered—and found the same lamps that I loved and Malcolm hated on the end tables in the living room, I did get girly, and they laughed at me, and we made love by their light because we were new and could still do sappy things like that with impunity.

And it meant when, a month later, I found a pair of plane tickets to Seattle on the same plane as the one that would take me to my next harrowing appointment with the crapshoot that was unprotected gay sex, I finally realized the scope of the truth Malcolm had said. It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about us. My problems had become our problems. My life had become our life, and it hit me, like a ton of bricks, that Malcolm’s rules had to become mine as well.

That long-overdue talk over a cup of coffee about how things had changed finally happened on a cool August morning as I spread those plane tickets out in the middle of the table and told them I was ready.

All those things unspoken that Charlie had lived by, that he had patiently tried to teach me the first time I’d lived with them, were set in stone. Or, at least, they were set out in print on a piece of paper that I actually signed. Not the “you will serve our meals and do our laundry” bits, but the part where I agreed cuffs and chains were okay in bed but whips were not. That I was pretty much okay with whatever play they wanted to make with my ass but that Malcolm bent for no one. That his hard limit was my tears, and if something came up that caused them, play stopped and talking began. No lies. No omissions.

And that we all had a safe place. A private place that no one entered without express invitation or permission.

“And one other thing,” Malcolm said, getting up. He glanced from me to Charlie, a question in his eyes, and Charlie nodded.

Malcolm strode to him, stood behind his chair, and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a short length of plain silver chain that he laid across Charlie’s breastbone and fastened at the back of his neck.

Charlie closed his eyes with a sigh.

“Better?” Malcolm asked.

Charlie touched the chain and nodded. “Yeah.”

I stared for a moment at the bit of glinting metal, the only piece of jewelry I’d ever seen either of them wear. It was a symbol, as real as any wedding band, and I let my gaze fall to the table.

“You still want to sign that contract?” Charlie asked, laying one big hand over mine.

Did I? Knowing they had made this that much more official? Between them and without me.

Charlie lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “It took me fifteen years to earn this,” he said softly. “It’s been a matter of months for you. Give it time. Get your head around the idea and for now, ignore your heart. You might not even want one when you get a real feel for what it means.”

I squirmed out of that gentle touch and fingered the edge of the paper. “Tell me I’m not replaceable,” I demanded but without looking at them.

Charlie took hold of my wrist on the table and motioned for the other one as well. I swallowed my fear and laid my free hand, palm down, over the contract. He took that one too and waited until I’d lifted my gaze to meet his.

“We’ve had men other than you, Kerry. You know that. They came and we cared about them, but they always left. None of them ever came back. None of them ever made us really look at what we were doing to each other, and none of them inspired us to fix things.”

“Not even Alistair?”

His eyes flickered, but he shook his head. “None of them were ever brave enough to tell us we were too broken for them. They came between us.” He stood, and I was forced to stand too, because he still had my wrists in that tight hold. Face-to-chest with him, I had to concede that any power I had here came from trusting them not to hurt me. “You brought us together. It took guts to leave like you did, knowing if you wanted to come back, there might not have been a place for you. So yeah, you’re not replaceable. You’re the one we want to make room for. My collar doesn’t mean you’ll never have one.”

He gripped both my wrists in one hand and followed the line of my throat with the other, up from my collarbone until his hand bracketed my jaw, and my face was turned up so I had to look at him. “And it doesn’t mean Malcolm will be the one to give it to you, either.”

Now that was a thought that hadn’t occurred to me, and I gasped, the small sound swallowed by Charlie’s kiss.

“The contract comes first,” he said when he’d lifted his lips from mine and I was hanging there, helpless in his grip, so needy I couldn’t think straight.

“Kiss me like that again and I’ll sign it in blood.”

He smiled and licked at the corners of his mouth, like he was chasing down every trace of taste I might have left on him. His hand snuck around to the back of my head and into my hair, and the sharp tug made me gasp and brought tears to my eyes. I blinked at him, suddenly fully back in the kitchen, brain online and body quivering.

“Ink will do just fine,” he assured me. “And then you get all the kisses you want.”

“Anywhere I want them?” I teased.

His eyes glimmered. “Anywhere I choose to put them.”

I nodded and stared. “Can I sign? Before I forget my name?” I was so hard from the kiss and the possessiveness and the grip he still had on me I thought I might lose my train of thought between where I stood and picking up the pen.

Instead of answering, he kissed me again, deep and hard and full of tongue. The thin tank top and boxers I’d thrown on didn’t seem substantial enough to protect me from the strength and the heat of him.

“Hurry up,” he growled, finally letting me go and turning me to face the table.

I signed the bottom of the neatly handwritten piece of paper while they watched, and then I pushed it across to Malcolm. Malcolm folded it and put it in the stack with the one Charlie had signed and the one he had signed.

“Come here.” He picked them all up and we dutifully followed him into the bedroom. On top of the tall dresser where they kept their clean underwear and socks sat a small wooden box, which he opened. He slipped the papers inside and took out a thin leather strap with a gold buckle. He smiled at Charlie, whose eyes glimmered even more brightly as he nodded and peeled off his T-shirt. His shorts quickly followed, and he dropped to his knees in front of Malcolm.

The black leather was carefully buckled around his throat and the silver chain removed and placed in the box.

“Comfortable?” Malcolm asked.

Charlie nodded. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good.” He ran a finger along the collar and smiled down at him, though Charlie couldn’t see the expression. It didn’t stop the big man on his knees shivering and closing his eyes, though, and I made a small step toward the door.

Malcolm turned his gaze to me and I froze. “He thinks he’s going to escape.” His smile was predatory and beyond possessive and directed right at me. “Will you put him on the bed, please, Charlie.”

It was phrased as a question, but it wasn’t one, and I was not given the option of getting on the bed myself. Charlie took me by one wrist and brought me there, shoved me down, and swung my legs up and across the mattress. He was quick when I tried to sit up and pushed me back down, crawling up with me and straddling me. He gripped the bottom edge of my shirt and pulled it over my head. I was slow getting my arms coordinated to the effort, and it tangled in my glasses, taking them off too.

I blinked at the fuzzy behemoth on top of me and squirmed, trying to avoid my hard-on being crushed against his pelvis.

He wasn’t on top of me long enough to worry about it, though, because as soon as the shirt was in Malcolm’s hands, he moved to take my shorts, and I was there again, like the first night home, splayed out and naked on the bed for them.

This time there was no doubting I was going to get the sex I badly wanted, and it wasn’t going to be anything like the exploratory lovemaking that had happened since I’d come back. In my peripheral vision, Malcolm handed something to Charlie.

“Give these back. I want him to see every small nuance on your face while I’m inside you.”

Charlie took what he held out, and a moment later, gently set my glasses back on my face. “Okay?” he asked, more gentleness in his voice than his hands as he repositioned me, arms spread and legs between his knees. “Do I have to tie you down?”

My heart beat a little faster at the thought.

“We’ll put cuffs on him,” Malcolm decided before I could even answer. “Then if he tries to touch anything, it’ll be easy.”

“Why can’t I touch?” I protested.

Malcolm took Charlie’s place when Charlie left to go to the cabinet and take out a pair of black cuffs with bright-green faux-fur lining. My heart sped more at the sight because they weren’t just cuffs. They were nice cuffs. Too small for Charlie and my favorite color.

“Those aren’t for serious play, you understand,” Malcolm said, noting my quickening breath as Charlie started on one wrist. “The synthetic fur would chafe if you sweat in them too long. But we thought you might appreciate the color.”

I nodded. “I do.”

“And they’re heavy.”

He was right. I lifted my hand once Charlie was done, and the weight was significant enough I wouldn’t forget they were there. “Why can’t I touch?” I asked again.

Malcolm ran a finger down the center of my chest, and I shivered. “Because I want you to understand your place, Kerry.” He bent and kissed me lightly. “And Charlie’s.” He got off me and stood back to admire Charlie’s handiwork. “He’s powerful and he’s strong, and you admire him.” He put one finger under Charlie’s chin, and abruptly, Charlie’s attention went from me to Malcolm completely.

Malcolm kissed him, deep, without laying another finger on him, and Charlie’s body language changed. His broad shoulders were still square and his spine still straight, but he bowed his head. His clasped his right wrist with his left hand behind his back and widened his stance. There was readiness in his bearing to drop to his knees, or bend, or do any other thing Malcolm instructed. The Charlie who had tossed me on the bed and gleefully cuffed me was suddenly completely and solely focused on Malcolm and Malcolm’s needs.