Chains and Canes (25 page)

Male posturing. She understood that. But these two meant more to her than the rest of the world. She wanted to shake them and bash their skulls together like rams on the charge, only she’d do it so hard that all the conflict cracked in two. More than that, she just wanted her men back—not these two quietly suspicious rivals.

Enough of this.

“Tara Jean, honey,” she called. “Can you queue up the music for ‘Forfeit’, please?”

That was the name of the duet she and Remy would perform. A man and a woman. Fighting. Loving. Aching. And ultimately, the man walked away. She’d insisted. They’d fought about the ending, but she’d held firm. Maybe some deeper, more savvy corner of her heart had decided on the most pessimistic ending.

Just in case.

Not like it helped. That he’d argued for an embrace instead of two lovers parting messed with her head.

“Give us this, Daniel. We know you mean the absolute best for us, but gilt ceilings and upholstered chairs would change what we’ve created. Let us speak for ourselves.” She touched his cheek, waiting until he met her eyes with the clarity and adoration he’d taught her to expect. “Let your angels dance.”

He cupped his hand over hers, pressing her palm more firmly against his cheek. “Yes.” Then he repeated it with more conviction. “Yes, do your jobs. It’s what we all love.”

Naya practically dragged Remy away, but halfway between Daniel and the performance area, Remy snapped out of his funk. He tossed his shoulders back and found that familiar swagger. “He thinks he can fix every goddamn thing.”

“Yes. Always has, and always will.”

“Fuck that.”

“Tell that to his face, in light of all he’s done to support us.”

“I’m not a child. He had no right.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“We gonna make it good, Naya girl?”

“Damn right we are.”

The other dancers backed away to form a semicircle around the rolled-out Marley flooring installed on the far side of the warehouse.

When the music started, the real emotions dropped into a subconscious place where Naya could borrow them, use them, bend them into art, with Remy as her partner in creation. She fought him. He shook her. She struggled to keep him close. He found ways to shrug free. More tears welled in her eyes, streaking her cheeks, as he pushed her to the floor. Body to body, he subdued the last of their contest of wills.

He was supposed to stand up and walk away. Everyone knew that. Instead, he kissed the tears from her cheeks. As the music faded, he rolled her into his embrace and tucked his face in the crook of her neck. In the back of her mind, Naya knew her toes were still pointed and his arms were arched in a deliberately artistic pose.

But the back of her mind wasn’t in charge. Right then, as the applause swelled and the warehouse grew quiet, all she knew was that Remy hadn’t walked away.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Opening the door to the bedroom Daniel shared with Naya felt a little like opening the doors to Narnia. They were stepping into another world. It looked like the reality they’d left behind, but it was skewed. Just enough difference to make everything strange and vague.

This was celebration for weeks of hard work and a reunion well deserved. It held palatable intensity. Seeing Naya and Remy wrapped together on the floor of the warehouse had been more powerful than every Skype session he’d been invited to join. More reassuring. More confusing.

All he knew for sure was what he’d known from the beginning—they were living art, from Naya’s tears to Remy’s toes and every touch in between.

That was the art Daniel felt was his alone as he drank them in.

Naya stood beside Daniel as Remy ambled past. Daniel took her hand in his, coiling their fingers, and wondered if she felt the same shot of nerves.

He loved their bedroom. Naya and her wicked imagination had decorated it, incorporating hints of their kink. Practically everything was a play space. The bed was a huge four-poster king with a wrought-iron canopy frame. At the headboard and footboard, the iron was twisted into beautifully abstract trees. Only the initiated might recognize how the tree branches and roots at the footboard stretched in a wide, subtle X—a covert St. Andrew’s cross.

Remy grinned as he touched the metal with surprising reverence. “You’ve quite the setup. So this is the sort of dungeon money buys?”

Daniel chuckled and tightened his fingers on Naya’s. He wasn’t afraid of admitting that money pleased him. Having it was second only to being able to spend it on his favorite people. “I wouldn’t call it much of a dungeon.”

“Playroom,” Naya offered.

“Yes.” Daniel smiled down at her. “That sounds about right.”

“So you’ve seen our girl trussed up on this?” Remy traced long fingers over a section of the wrought iron.

Daniel briefly closed his eyes.
Our girl
was a shot of pure relief—so much better than the uncomfortable showdown drama that had unfolded at the warehouse, and more than two weeks of feeling left on the outs. The three of them were in this together, no matter the unexpected flashes of jealousy. All he wanted was to be part of their beauty. He’d never fought harder for anything.

“I have. Trussed up and beaten.”

“You liked that. I’m sure of it.” Remy cast a judicious eye over the rest of the room, lingering on the wide vanity seat that doubled as a spanking bench. Against the west wall was a small sitting area with a sturdy ottoman and an even sturdier wrought-iron coffee table. “Where’s the toys? I know you have plenty.”

Naya and Daniel exchanged a look. Though he couldn’t know exactly what Naya was thinking, he could hazard a guess. She was grinning. “We do,” she said.

Daniel opened the five-foot tall wardrobe next to the bed. The upper doors were French-style and revealed a hanging rack of toys. Floggers, canes, lengths of restraints. By the time Daniel opened the three drawers at the bottom, revealing paddles and nipple clamps and smaller items, Remy was standing next to him.

Breathing hard.

Not panting. Nothing so crass just yet. But Daniel’s tension rose in tandem with the other man’s.

“Now
that’s
a toy box.”

Naya laughed. “Thought you might like that, Sir.”

“Get naked.” He didn’t turn around as he snapped the order. And it was an order, harsh and sharp-edged. No laughing tease.

Naya skimmed her tiny dress over her head and tossed it to the side. By the time she was pulling down her panties, Remy had selected two lengths of chain. He connected them to black leather wrist cuffs. His eyes narrowed as he looked around the room. Even though he saw Naya, appreciated her, he was a man on a mission.

He pointed. “That fixture. It comes down.”

“Yes, Sir.” Daniel was surprised—pleased too, with a shot of pride. Remy was the first person to guess that the iron-and-crystal chandelier could be lowered on hydraulics from the twelve-foot ceiling.

Daniel and Naya had picked an astute man for this exploration. He flicked a switch at the side of the bed.

The chandelier maintained the subtle tree motif, with branches and decorations that looked like leaves. The bottom-most swoops of iron disguised hooks. Remy attached the chains first, then held a hand toward Naya without looking at her. “Come here,
chère
.”

She cast what felt like a last look at Daniel. She blew him a kiss. His gorgeous angel about to go far away, even if she couldn’t escape.

“And you,” Remy said. “You woulda watched. Before. With some Domina in charge. I bet you sat in that corner chair.”

“I did.”

“Not this time.”

Remy wrapped the cuffs around Naya’s wrists, one at a time, before securing her arms over her head. Her body stretched, long and beautiful. Using assured, deft touches, Remy nudged her feet so that her legs were shoulder width apart. He’d adjusted the chains and hydraulics so that her toes skimmed the floor. The strain on her shoulders wouldn’t be unsafe, but she’d need to use her core muscles to keep herself steady.

“Strip, boy.”

Daniel obeyed as quickly as Naya had. By the time he shucked his slacks, his cock arrowed toward where Remy stood behind Naya. The man rested his chin on her shoulder. His hands roamed over her breasts and the flat plane of her stomach. He trailed his nails through the carefully trimmed patch of dark hair between her legs. She jolted toward his touch but then jerked when Remy took out his displeasure on her nipples.

“Oh! Sir,
gracias
,” she said on a breathy moan.

“She’s exquisite. All ours.” Remy spread his hands over her tits, lifting them upward. “I want to see her hurt. Writhing with pain, floating away. Go get me her favorite instrument.”

“It’s a close call, Sir. Either the flogger or the cane.” Daniel knew he wasn’t obeying the letter of the command, but he wanted to read Remy’s mood. Fast and harsh would mean the cane. If Remy had intentions of drawing this out, Daniel would choose the flogger.

Daniel knew which he wanted to see. The cane, if not immediately then eventually. Naya would scream, and she was always a work of art when she screamed. But he didn’t get to pick. He was learning to trust that Remy knew best—or at the very least, that he knew what he wanted for them at moments such as these. There was no kinky rulebook that said what would be
best
, but it would damn sure be good.

Remy scraped between Naya’s breasts, down to the top of her cunt. She squealed and lifted on her toes. With the chandelier lowered, it shone bronze over their skin. The bar through Remy’s eyebrow glimmered.

“Bring me the flogger.”

Three floggers hung in the wardrobe. Daniel chose Naya’s favorite, with its dark brown handle and elk hide falls dyed deep red. Once, he’d asked her why she loved it. She’d done her best to explain that a single blow from that heavy a flogger shot straight through her, hitting her all at once, from her back to her breath.

Daniel hadn’t exactly comprehended her halting words, but it was enough that she preferred it and was willing to try putting physical sensations into words—always after sex, when they were wrapped up in bed.

Now he handed that power to Remy.

Remy held out his hand and waited for Daniel to close the gap between them, for Daniel to symbolically hand over the flogger. The entire time, watching Daniel approach, Remy kept one arm wrapped around Naya.

“Good boy,” he said, his low voice like soft, flawless satin.

Leaning in, he took a kiss from Daniel. He plundered. His tongue pushed past Daniel’s teeth and stroked. Daniel’s first inclination was to fight back. To take in return. This wasn’t the time, or the place…or the man. Remy wasn’t someone Daniel could ever take from.

He didn’t want to.

Remy ended the kiss as abruptly as he’d started it, then reached over Naya’s shoulders. He used the handle of the flogger across her windpipe and craned her neck to an uncomfortable angle. He kissed her too. “You’re both mine for tonight.”

Daniel’s gaze met Naya’s. Joy and anticipation mirrored his own. No matter his doubts when he was on the other side of the planet, or when he stepped into the world Remy and Naya had created in his absence, Daniel was with them now. He had a place within their synergy.

Only
for tonight
gave him pause. Daniel wanted this synergy for the rest of their lives.

“Fuck her, Daniel. Standing right here facing her. You may lift one of her knees to your hip, but that’s it. You may kiss her, but for every kiss, you’ll bite her tits.”

Daniel shuddered on a hot rush. This was unexpected. Naya was trussed between them. His cock throbbed as he sought her wetness. He knew her pussy, knew how she felt around him, but as he nudged between her lips…this was different.

He was fucking his fiancée—under orders from the man who dominated them both.

The clench of her sheath exploded colors behind his eyelids. Remy let them warm up, find their rhythm, while his hands squeezed between them both. His nails were short, but that didn’t stop him from leaving pale pink lines over Naya’s flesh. “There you are,” he whispered. “She feels like heaven. That tight pussy. She’s soaking wet and getting wetter. You love it. Love her.”

“I do, Sir.” Daniel wrenched his gaze away from Naya, only to find Remy’s stormy-blue fire watching from over her shoulder. Her arms formed a shallow Y shape where they stretched upwards on the chains.

“You’ll love this even more.”

Remy backed up a handful of steps. He tucked the handle of the flogger in his back pocket long enough to strip the black T-shirt he’d worn to the penthouse. Worn-out jeans draped low over his lean hips. The dark ink across his shoulder absorbed the light.

He shook the flogger out at his side. “Tell her, boy. Tell her what I’m about to do.”

“He’s getting ready,” Daniel said darkly. “He’s got the flogger and he’s pulling his arm back and— Fuck!”

It was like nothing he’d ever felt. No direct impact, not on Daniel, but he was pressed so deeply in Naya’s pussy that the impact shook through her and into him. She clenched around his cock, like when she was about to come. Her body jerked. Her eyes went wide, then slipped closed. She moaned against his chest, which added to the sweet torment.

He hadn’t been told to stop. He was engulfed in heat and closeness, from the arch of her hips into his strokes to the way that Remy angled back and readied for another blow.

He was making a show of it, ratcheting the tension. “Fuck her, boy. Fuck her wet cunt while I make her hurt. We’re both giving her what she needs.”

Daniel drove into her, hitching her knee in a tight grip, the way he’d been given permission to.

Remy flogged her again. This one whipped her ass. A couple strands of leather snapped around to catch Daniel’s inside thigh, but he barely noticed the sting.

Daniel lost track of time. Maybe only five minutes, maybe a half hour. Sensation and reality blended into something lost. He laid his face between her perfect breasts, sucking a tight nipple between his lips.

“I said bite,” Remy snapped. “Not suck.”

Daniel obeyed. Naya’s head wrenched back on a cry. Remy added to the shock by smacking those deep red falls across her back like a lashing rainstorm. Each strike reverberated through Naya and scorched Daniel with the most cutting pleasure he’d ever known. To share in Naya’s pain—God, it was a gift.