Complete Bliss (a Her Billionaires novella #3) (11 page)

And Laura was not Jill.

He had lived two different lives, truly. Before Jill. After Jill. Except it seemed unfair to Laura to call her something as simplistic as “After Jill,” as if Jill were the standard by which time was marked.

Perhaps he should train his mind to think differently.

Before Laura.

After Laura.

Some part of him eased a little, a tiny obstacle removed, as the thought poured through and over him, providing a balm for a discomfort he didn’t recognize, but that nonetheless had been in him, all-pervasive and omnipresent. Time was an elusive commodity these days, but even more elusive was time alone. With his thoughts. On the road, pounding out the confusion.

He hadn’t gone for a run in four days, and that might as well have been an eternity for him. Coming here meant sacrificing what could have been ten miles of therapy, each footstep a confession, each stride a release.

Trevor’s breathing went even just as Madge appeared with a tray of tiny red cakes shaped like lobsters, and a sundae bigger than his one-year-old daughter.

“What the hell is that?” Joe’s exclamation made Mike smile. The Beefeater had cracked. Poor kid was wound tighter than a fishing line.

“It’s The Orgy.” Madge winked at Dylan, then dropped the grin for the two younger men. “Of all the tables to bring this to, I figured you guys would enjoy it.”

Joe went pale as her words hit him. Alex tried not to laugh, while Dylan just picked up a spoon and stabbed at some kind of ice cream with peanut butter cups in it.

“Do we get an Orgy, too?” called out a voice from the other table. Darla. All five men turned in unison to find her eying Trevor and Joe with a coy innocence that made Mike, Dylan, and Alex chuckle. 

Trevor and Joe just stared at her, and Mike felt less pity for him and Joe. A kindling of admiration began to form inside him. The way the three of them looked at each other gave him pause.

With no one else—
ever
—to talk about what he, Jill, and Dylan had created twelve years ago, he didn’t have a roadmap. A pattern. A plan. They’d quite simply invented it all, from soup to nuts, those many years ago. He’d lost his parents—emotionally, for they’d cut him off when he’d finally told them the real nature of their relationship—and being left adrift like that from his family of origin had meant Dylan and Jill unfairly had to play two roles in his life, instead of the already single, complicated role they’d all chosen.

He watched Trevor return to his food, but Joe’s eyes remained on Darla, the flicker of his upper lids moving, widening slightly, the only way to measure the guy’s emotions. He was such a pressure cooker. Mike saw a little of himself in Joe—the self he’d been in college, a bundle of negativity stewing in itself, trying to break free but chained by his own expectations.

While Joe could easily pass for Dylan’s younger brother, and Trevor was a shorter version of Mike (and that, alone, was disquieting), the personalities were swapped. Trevor was more like Dylan had been years ago, and Mike saw his former self in Joe. 

God help him. The awakening that was coming—if Joe had the courage to go inward and explore the richness that the intimacy with Trevor and Darla could bring—would be a supernova. Cataclysmic and soul churning. Would Joe, Darla, and Trevor make it through to the other side?

Who knew?

Suddenly, he realized why this meeting was so important to Laura. And Darla. And especially Josie.

And it filled him with a resonating grief and comfort that made him fight back tears.

“I count twelve scoops of ice cream in there, seven sauces, four different kinds of cookies, and a bunch of Thin Mints,” Darla called out as Madge shot past. “Where’s my Orgy?” 

Mike coughed hard, clearing his throat and covering the massive wave of emotion that threatened to render him useless today. This was harder than he’d thought. The relationship between him, Dylan, and Laura was stronger than ever, and the addition of Cyndi as a nanny had opened up time for the three of them to reconnect consistently, to get a sense of equanimity, to revel in the joy of intimacy and laughter, of sensuality and bonds that made their family so much stronger. 

He never imagined he could have this back in those early days when just wanting Jill and Dylan, wanting what he
wanted
, was considered so subversive that, in the end, it cost him his parents.

Being true to himself had meant losing the very people who created him.

Which was a bit like losing God.

Over the years he’d tracked his parents through understanding and loving family members who either didn’t know the truth about the rift, or knew and didn’t care. Mom was still working and Dad had retired. Did they know about his life at all? Had the news channel stories and the newspaper articles trickled out to them?

They’d never reached out. Not once. After being raised in such a conservative, religious household he’d been frightened to tell the truth, and it turned out he’d been right.

All too right.

For them, their beliefs and faith formed a core so solid they couldn’t let him be himself without it shattering their view of the world. When the two came into conflict, they’d chosen—

Not
him.

Joe was going through the same thing. Mike softened, watching the younger man, knowing that the anger that simmered inside came from a deep fear of rejection. Of not meeting expectations. Of not being good enough.

Of never,
ever
being good enough.

Dylan hadn’t been that way. Some part of him had always been casual, letting problems roll off his back, remaining more centered, more stable in the face of challenge. And Dylan’s parents—as staunchly Catholic as they were—had been more understanding of the truth about Dylan, Mike, and Jill. While they hadn’t been unconditionally accepting, they’d been bemused, a bit awkward, but never seeming to invalidate their son for simply loving a different way.

The hum of fear that radiated off Joe touched Mike on a new frequency, and he slid the sundae toward him with a smile. “Dig in.”

“I’m not really that hungry,” Joe answered, though he smiled back.

“Not a fan of orgies?” Trevor joked.

“Ha ha. I
did
go to Eden,” Joe shot back, grabbing a chocolate wafer cookie and absent-mindedly gnawing on it. 

Dylan nudged Mike and pulled him over to whisper, “What’s Eden? And what’s up with Joe?”

“No clue about Eden,” Mike whispered. “But remember me in college?”

Dylan stiffened. “Yeah. That bad?”

Mike held back a snort. “That bad.”

“That why Laura wants us here? To try to help?”

Mike sighed. “I don’t know, but I think it’s a fool’s game. I wouldn’t have talked to anyone back then. Only you and Jill.”

Dylan nodded. “And even then, you were a fucking asshole.”

“We’ve gone over this before,” Mike said tightly. He didn’t need his nose rubbed in it.

“That time you told us we were abominations and that there was something wrong with Jill for wanting us both at the same time was a blast,” Dylan threw out there, making Mike cringe. 

“You really want to run through an inventory of stupid things we’ve done over time? Because I have a list with your name on it, too.”

Mike sensed a change at the table and broke away from his whispered talk with Dylan to find Alex, Joe, and Trevor all licking ice cream-covered spoons and watching them carefully.

They both stared back.

Alex broke the silence, poking his thumb toward the tri-headed, huddled mass at the booth next to them. It was clear to Mike that Josie, Darla, and Laura were not bonding
only
over ice cream and caramel sauce. The whispered gasps made him extra curious, but he knew how this worked.

While Laura might share intimate details with her friends, she’d never share
what
she shared with him and Dylan.

And that was that.

He hadn’t talked with any man other than Dylan about what he did in the bedroom—or in his heart—in…

Ever.

Never, once, had he been the guy who talked about conquests. In college he’d kept his damn mouth shut about sex, because what he wanted and what everyone else wanted diverged wildly. Better to act like he was one of them than to risk being labeled a deviant.

At least with Dylan and Jill they’d been deviants together.

Safety in numbers.

A decade of adjustment and two years with Laura now meant his headspace was a lot clearer, and he could talk more openly if pressed, but as Joe folded in on himself with Alex’s words, and as the food dwindled down to table scraps (mostly from Trevor, who had the appetite of a thirteen-year-old boy with hollow legs and a tapeworm), the anticipation of what was coming made all the men seem disturbed. Rattled. 

Deeply uncomfortable.

Mike included.

Dylan, on the other hand, stretched his arms wide with a yawn, muscles bulging, and then kept his arms high, though never touching Mike or Trevor.

“Who wants to talk about dicks and holes? Lube? Sex toys? How about swings that don’t have cheap clamps that break while you’re in the middle of—”

Madge walked right up behind Joe with eyebrows high. Alex turned bright red at her appearance, and Mike bit the inside of his cheek to avoid laughing. Trevor was flushed, like an errant schoolboy.

Dylan just stared her down.

“You need to get a good quality beam clamp. One that can hold…” Her eyes catalogued Mike, then Dylan, and finally flitted over to Laura. “Can hold a good seven hundred pounds or more. Not hard. Just go to White’s Hardware and explain that you need one that can handle lots of wear and tear and that kind of weight load. If Dmitri’s there, tell him Madge sent you.” She winked. “He’ll know exactly why you’re there.” 

Joe pushed his plate away from the table and kept his head low, as if the old woman would smack him upside the head if he brought any attention to himself.

Dylan wasn’t cowed. “Seven hundred pounds? How big is your grandpa?” he asked Alex with a giant, shit-eating grin on his face.

“Oh, not from Eddie,” she answered, laughing and placing a friendly hand on Alex’s shoulder. “From…before him.” Her voice went low, and Dylan just laughed. 

Alex looked like a statue. A closed-eyed, post-apocalyptic statue who remained stoic in the face of complete, soul-sucking destruction. Mike imagined that thinking about his grandfather’s sex life was about as appetizing as tea-bagging the old Warlock Waitress cardboard cutout. 

“Madge, could you please not talk about my grandfather and sex in front of me? We’ve talked about this before,” Alex said in a voice that sounded like broken guitar strings. He let out a long, hot sigh, and Mike was surprised by Madge’s reaction.

She looked
chastened
.

Dylan sat straight up and folded his hands in his lap, staring at Alex like he was a god.

Someone had made Madge
behave
?

“For you, sweet Alex, I’ll stop.” She touched his cheek and strode into the kitchen, then shouted, “Caleb, get out those penis molds! We need to make more lobster cakes!” 

“Your grandfather is a lucky man,” Mike joked, ribbing Alex. He got an anemic smile in return.

“Your grandpa is Madge’s boyfriend?” Trevor asked.

Alex just nodded.

“Holidays must be really fun. The dinner conversation. Does she bring a strap-on to the table?” Dylan asked. 

Alex threw a sugar packet at him.

The atmosphere had changed just enough to make everyone relax slightly, an odd reaction to geriatric sex toy jokes, but hey—they’d take what they could get. That locker-room jocularity that Mike never understood descended over the group, Dylan and Trevor most comfortable with it, Alex somewhere in the middle, and Mike and Joe bewildered, it seemed, if Mike was reading the younger man right.

“You ever been in a threesome relationship before?” Dylan asked Joe directly.

Joe’s mouth dropped open, and Mike was sure pea soup was about to pour out of it.

“First time. We’re cherries,” Trevor said as he dragged half a red lobster cake through a congealed mass of melted ice cream and marshmallow sauce, then shoved it in his mouth. The guy must have the metabolism of a hummingbird.

“Cherries,” Joe echoed.

“And so far, so good?”

Joe just nodded. Mike resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Dylan was being cagey and coy on purpose, making a mockery of the entire scene. What was next? Talk about the weather?

“Look,” Mike said, leaning forward. All four men leaned with him. “This isn’t exactly the easiest conversation to have,” he added in a hushed tone. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Madge gently push on Darla’s shoulder, the younger woman giving her a WTF? look, but sliding in, turning their three-top into a four-top. Mike’s curiosity opened to full throttle, but he was trapped.

Had to deal with the drama in front of him, no matter how interesting the drama next door was.

“We can just pretend,” Joe said in a voice full of contempt, the scoff so strong Mike could feel it scrape against his skin. “They don’t have to know we didn’t really talk about…you know…” 

“Being in a threesome?” Dylan’s voice made Joe flinch. That seemed to be Dylan’s goal.

Mike was starting to see how this would all play out if they didn’t take control.

“Yes,” Trevor said in a long sigh. “Being in a threesome. But Joe doesn’t like the fact that I’m around. He wants Darla to himself.”

“Not true!” Joe hissed.

Trevor made a noise of disgust. “You’re fucking jealous, dude, and you won’t admit it.”

“If I were the jealous type I wouldn’t be in a—”

“Threesome.” All four of them said it in unison. Joe’s lips pursed, jaw clenched so hard his teeth could cut fiberoptic cable.

“Threesome,” he mimicked back. “It’s not like I can’t say it.”

“Have you said it to your parents?” Mike asked softly.

The haunted eyes that met his looked like the soul’s mirror. He couldn’t have been more different from Joe in physique, coloring, carriage, and mannerisms, but he was staring into the eyes of his emotional twin for that split second.