The Reluctant Dom (20 page)

He didn't think it was his imagination that she seemed more relaxed now.

Seth released her with a deep sigh and a kiss to her temple. “Thank you, darlin'. That was wonderful.”

“Not going to fight me on this anymore?”

“I guess not. As long as you don't try to push me too fast and you're really okay with it. And,” he added, leveling his gaze at her, “you don't do it in front of Kaden. I don't think I can handle that yet.”

“It's not cheating.”

“It feels like it to me.”

“It's not cheating when he's okay with it.”

“He wouldn't be okay with it if the circumstances were different.”

She spoke so quietly he almost thought he'd misheard her. “He was going to ask you to move in anyway, before this happened. We've talked about it for years. We wanted to wait until your divorce was final.”

He grabbed her arms again and made her sit up so he could look at her. “What?”

Now she looked uncomfortable. “We were going to ask you to move in and maybe see what happened from there.”

“Leah, what the fuck?”

“I didn't want you to meet someone else and get stuck with a shitty woman again,” she quickly said, the words spilling from her. “I was so sick of these women not treating you right. None of them were good enough for you, Seth. Face it, they weren't. I thought maybe if you were here, where I could take care of you ... maybe you'd let me do that for you.”

Sometimes he was terminally slow on the uptake. Many of her previous comments from the past weeks and even from several years earlier slammed home. “How long have you been in love with me?” he whispered.

“Always.”

Stunned, he released her. “Go to bed, sweetie,” he numbly muttered.

She quickly climbed out of the hot tub, grabbed her shirt, and returned to her bedroom.

Seth sat there in emotional shock, trying to absorb this information. He needed time alone to process this. How much did Kaden know? How much had she told him?

How much had Kaden
not
told him yet?

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Chapter 11

After a restless night, Seth awoke early the next morning, a little before dawn. His plan had been to go jogging and try to quiet his mind. When he started the coffee Kaden must have heard him and walked out to the kitchen.

Seth looked at him. Despite what he'd told Leah the night before about not wanting to talk about it, he needed to talk about it. “Dude. What. The. Fuck?”

Kaden's sneaky smile told him a lot. “What?”

“Don't bullshit me. I know you two talked last night after ... you know.”

“Know what?”

“Quit busting my balls. Don't make me fucking say it.”

Kaden leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want—” Seth realized his voice had risen. He dropped it, speaking low. “I want you to tell me. What. The. Fuck?”

The men heard the door to the master bedroom open. Kaden looked at the floor. “Go back to bed, love,” he called out. “You don't need to get up yet.”

There was the briefest of pauses, then Leah's slightly puzzled-sounding, “Yes, Master.”

They heard the door close.

Kaden looked at Seth and dropped his voice. “She's always been in love with you.”

“She's. Your. Wife!”

“I know.”

Speechless, Seth stood there, trying to sort out his emotions. “How can you even stand to fucking look at me?”

“I'm looking at the man I love even more than a brother, a man I know would gladly switch places with me in a heartbeat to save my life if he thought he could. A man who will love and cherish the woman I love as much as I do.”

“How long have you been planning this? And why the fuck did you lie to me? What was all that adjusting your thinking and being honest bullshit you talked about?”

“It wasn't bullshit. I just sort of fudged the timeframe. We've been wanting to approach you for years. You kept meeting those asshole women before we could talk to you. And we didn't want to mess up your divorces once you'd left them. I was waiting this time until you told us you were legally free again.” He studied his hands. “I was going to ask you ... before.”

That fucking word again.

Kaden continued. “We weren't going to tell you about the BDSM stuff at first. We were going to talk you into moving in with us and then go from there, kind of ease you into it. I didn't want to shock you too much at first. I didn't want to freak you out,” Kaden calmly said.

“Well, um, congratulations, you freaked me out anyway.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

Seth studied him. “How can you say you want to share your wife with me?”

“Because I love you.”

“Dude, I am sooo not doing you! I thought we settled that.”

“We did. I already told you I don't swing that way. I don't mean that kind of love. I knew I needed another person I could trust to help take care of her. What the fuck would happen, for example, if some drunk driver hit me on the way home? It'd fucking kill her.” He took a deep breath. “I didn't seriously think it was something I'd have to worry about for years. I thought I had all the time in the world. I trust you with her, man. I wasn't bullshitting you when I told you that. Look at how good you took care of her while I was in Atlanta.”

“How can you stand there and tell me you're really okay sharing her with me?”

“Compersion.”

Seth did a double-take. “What the fuck?”

“It's a term the poly community uses. It's basically the opposite of jealousy, although it's more complex than that. If she'd loved anyone else, it'd fucking kill me. But it's you. And as weird as it sounds—and yes, I'll be the first to admit it sounds weird—I'm not jealous of you.”

“Poly? Polyester?” Seth didn't know polyester had its own community. “What the fuck does that have to do with what we're talking about?”

Kaden laughed, long and hard. “Polyamorous,” he finally managed.

“I am
so
not becoming a fucking Mormon.” He thought Kade was raised Methodist, even though he and Leah didn't go to church.

Kaden rolled his eyes. “Not polygamy. Jesus Christ, we're not talking
Big Love
here, dude.”

“What about all that crap you said about being angry and jealous?”

His eyes grew sad. “I am angry. And I'm jealous. But not about you being with her. I've never felt that. I'm angry and jealous I don't get to be there with the two of you. You will get all these years with her that I won't have. It's not fair.”

Seth studied him for a long time before speaking again. “So what was your original plan? To freaking share her?”

“Yes. Once I realized she loved you I talked to her about it. Not about specifically training you to be her Master. Just about moving you in and seeing what happened.”

“You're a bigger fucking man than I am.”

He shrugged. “I love to make her happy. It's not like she begged me to do it but she loved the idea when I brought it up. We figured if nature took its course and things worked out, then I could talk to you about the BDSM stuff and see if you'd be interested in learning that.”

“How were you planning on keeping that secret?”

“We weren't. We were just going to tone it way down around you so you didn't know the full extent of what we were doing, that's all.”

“Last night she sounded like this plan was a surprise to her. About the making me her master shit.”

He shrugged. “You've seen how she is. I don't like to tell her more than I have to. If I'd told her my worries, she would have panicked and thought something was wrong with me. I was going to ease you into the Dom training with her and figured after a year or two it would be an automatic assumption on her part. She would have naturally accepted you as her Dom, so if anything did happen to me, you could simply pick up from that point and move on with her.” He picked at his fingernails. “I never figured on having to give you a crash course like this.”

Seth remained quiet, trying to absorb this new information.

Kaden eventually spoke again. “If you're going to back out on us, I need to know. Right now. As in
right
now. Because I have to make plans for her. Can I count on you?”

“You said honesty was the most important thing. What else haven't you told me?”

“That's it. I'm sorry. I was trying not to dump everything on you at once. It was shitty enough circumstances to begin with.”

Seth leaned against the counter and closed his eyes.

kaden'sdying

There had been times, stretches of hours, where he didn't hear that mental heartbeat. Could almost kid himself that it wouldn't happen.

Kaden's voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “I need you, Seth. She needs you. You can doubt yourself all you want but I know you. I know you would rather die than let her down.”

“I still can't get over you wanting to share her.”

“She's not your average woman. You and I are it for her. Imagine how hard it was on her all those years watching you with those women. It killed her. I wasn't kidding when I said there were nights I had to gag her to shut her up. Not just that, give her sessions in the playroom to take her mind off of things. Lots of distraction. She hated your wives. I told her she couldn't dump her feelings on you, because while I could understand why she felt that way, I knew it would freak you out.”

“Such an understatement, you have no clue.”

“The right woman, Seth. We're not the only people in the world who live in a poly triad. At least, for a little while, we can make her happy, make her dream come true.” He looked sad again. “Not as many years as I had hoped.”

“I can't share her with someone else, dude. I mean, yeah, you. Okay. She's your wife. What if she falls in love with someone else in the future? I can't do that.”

“She would never make you do that. In nearly twenty years, she's never expressed an interest in anyone else but you. Ever. She would have sat back until the day she died and never told you how she felt if I'd had a problem with it. She didn't want to admit it to me but I saw her. I saw how she tried to take care of you. I've never seen her react to someone the way she reacts to you. She's always been naturally submissive to you. I've seen her take on old farts on the boards at some of those non-profits and she's a fucking ballbuster. She normally doesn't take shit from people, you know that. She trusts you. She's always trusted you.”

Despite his new flurry of conflicting emotions, Seth had to admit he'd always felt a connection with Leah. Something he'd never had with his ex wives or girlfriends.

Something he'd always wished he had.

“Admit it,” Kaden whispered. “You've always loved her, too.”

Seth studied the Italian tile floor. He remembered the day he went with Leah to help her pick it out, how she'd deferred to him, asked him the pros and cons of this versus different ones.

How she'd trusted him.

His eyes lifted to the cabinets. The day she picked out the style and finish, Kaden had sat in the showroom, a subtle smile on his face, while Leah asked Seth for his opinions.

The house was full of memories of helping Leah make decisions about it. Kaden had never, not once, spoken his opinion. He'd told Seth that whatever Leah wanted, Leah got.

At the time, Seth assumed it was simply the words of a loving husband with a pretty fat bank account.

Now he saw it in a new light, illuminated from a different point of view.

Leah calling him, sometimes fifteen or twenty times a day while the house was being built, asking for his opinion on something. When he asked Kaden about it, nervous it might be construed the wrong way, Kaden shrugged. “If it doesn't bother me, it shouldn't bother you. If she's bugging you, tell her, she'll try not to.”

No, it hadn't bugged him, although it pissed his ex off every time she saw Leah's number show up on his phone.

In fact, he wouldn't deny he'd dragged his feet on a few things, trying to prolong the experience.

He'd really missed talking to Leah when the house was done.

Leah asking him, almost a hopeful look in her eye, if he liked something she'd picked.

Not Kaden.

Him.

The paint and carpet and furniture. The landscaping.

Taking him with them when she shopped for mattresses for the guest rooms, making him lie down and try them all out, picking the one he'd liked the best...

Fuck.

He met Kaden's eyes again. His friend watched him from across the kitchen. “Can I count on you?” he quietly asked again.

Seth nodded. “I won't let her down. Or you.”

Kaden nodded, sighing. “I know you're weirded out and don't want to discuss details. I understand that. Just know that whenever you're ready...” He smiled. “We've got a big fucking bed, dude.”

Seth laughed and closed his eyes. “I'm sooo not ready to have this conversation, Kade.”

“She's going to be upset she didn't get to wake you up this morning.” Seth didn't miss the playful gleam in his friend's eye.

Seth patted his stomach. He'd managed to lose ten pounds over the past several weeks despite Leah's great and plentiful cooking. “Yeah, well, I need to go jogging. I've got to get in shape. If I'm going to do this, I need to get my ass in gear and get my body back in condition. I look like a fucking slob compared to you.”

Kaden laughed and left the kitchen. Seth decided to forgo the coffee until after his run, sure that Leah, once released by Kaden, would come looking for him and he might not get out of the house once she got her hands on him.

Literally.

While muggy, the morning hadn't turned obnoxiously hot yet. Seth set a fast pace, pushing himself, trying to remember his Army PT crap that he'd spent too many months and years trying to forget. He needed to get into shape. That wasn't bullshit on his part.

He needed to get in shape because he promised Kade he'd help. Leah needed him.

And as much as he despised exercise, he would do it for them.

For Leah.

* * * *

Sure enough, a few minutes after Seth returned from his run and stepped into the shower, Leah tapped on his bathroom door.