Mac hesitated, then rotated his left hand, their signal for green or yes.

Patting him on the shoulder, Sully ignored the questions in Mac’s eyes and his arched eyebrow. He clipped Mac’s ankle cuffs to the bench and grabbed a light flogger to start their warm-up.

He fought the urge to hurry, hoping Mac didn’t sink so far into subspace he couldn’t remember his command. He took his time, checking in frequently while knowing that he’d owe Mac an apology and a make-up play session later. He paused at one point to reach between Mac’s legs and squeeze his balls.

Mac’s hips bucked against him, wanting more, wanting release.

Sully slapped him on the ass. “Not yet, slave. Later.”

* * *

Clarisse couldn’t tune out Doreen’s soft voice as she watched Sully play with Mac. There remained no doubt in Clarisse’s mind that Mac enjoyed it, but reconciling that with common sense and her own experiences still troubled her.

Sully’s back muscles rippled with every stroke as he alternated between using the flogger and sensuous strokes from his hands. Her breath caught in her throat.

“They look beautiful together, don’t they?” Doreen whispered.

“He gets Mac so deep into subspace it’s amazing. I wish I could do that, go deep like Mac does.”

Sully put down the flogger and picked up a cane similar to the one he used on Mac before. She winced as every hard stroke landed, but she watched how Sully alternated hard strikes across his ass with lighter ones, reminiscent of how Mac had demonstrated on her, across his shoulders and the backs of his thighs. After ten minutes of this, Sully switched to a four-foot whip.

Clarisse cringed. Correctly interpreting her reaction, Doreen patted her on the arm. “Mac loves this part. That’s his favorite one.”

Sully took a few practice strokes in the air, gauging his distance and stroke, before stepping in and nailing Mac in the ass several times in quick succession. Then Mac raised his left hand as far as the cuff would allow. He rapidly shook his fist up and down.

Sully immediately stopped. He removed Mac’s ball gag and bent in. Clarisse couldn’t hear them over the music. Sully looked at her.

“Please go into our bathroom and grab that tube of ointment off the counter, the one Mac uses on my leg.”

Clarisse raced to do it. By the time she returned, Sully had Mac’s right leg unclipped and stretched out, massaging it, but Mac’s ball gag was back in place.

She handed Sully the tube and watched as he squirted ointment in his hand and spent several minutes working on Mac’s calf. How did she reconcile that tender treatment with the sadistic scourging he’d administered him?

After several minutes, Sully lowered Mac’s leg. “Better, slave?”

Mac rotated his left hand.

“Do you want me to continue playing or stop?”

Mac rotated his hand again.

Sully rehooked Mac’s ankle cuff and picked up a flogger.

Clarisse returned to her place next to Doreen. After a few minutes, Sully leaned in and whispered something to Mac. Mac’s ass had started gyrating in the air by this point, his rigid cock desperate for release.

Whatever Sully said to Mac, it made the bound man moan loudly enough Clarisse could hear him over the music.

Sully returned to his place behind Mac, but as he did, he let his gaze knowingly settle on Clarisse for a moment before he turned and reached under Mac’s hips with his right hand. With his left hand, he started spanking Mac. Heat filled Clarisse’s face as she realized what he was doing—jerking Mac off.

“How did Sully know to stop?” Clarisse asked Doreen for an excuse to take her attention off the two men.

“Mac called red,” Doreen said. “Which is really rare. He must have cramped bad. That thing Mac did with his hand, that’s their code. I think that’s only the third time I’ve ever seen Mac call red, and they get pretty intense.”

Clarisse digested that while Sully finished Mac off. Mac tensed, his back arching as a loud moan escaped around the ball gag. When he finally went limp on the bench, Sully got a towel and cleaned him up. He applied a different lotion to Mac’s reddened flesh, then unclipped Mac and rubbed his arms and legs for him before letting him sit up. He wrapped a blanket around the other man and stood there holding him while Mac sat on the bench and leaned against Sully, his eyes closed.

For the briefest of moments, Clarisse wished it was her wrapped securely in Sully’s arms as she remembered the night she spent with them.

Or better, in Mac’s.

Alex caught Doreen’s eye and, crooking his finger at her, motioned her outside. She grabbed Clarisse’s arm. “Want to watch us?”

Clarisse glanced back at Mac and Sully. Sully’s eyes had also closed, his face buried in Mac’s hair as he whispered something.

She wanted to stay. She wanted to be a part of them.

And part of her couldn’t stand to watch them without being a part of it.

She didn’t really want to watch Doreen play, but it was a good excuse to leave. She followed Doreen out of the room.

* * *

When they were alone in the playroom and Sully knew Mac had regained most of his senses, he left him sitting on the bench and turned off the music. Mac’s brown eyes followed him.

“What?” Sully asked.

Mac sent one eyebrow skyward. “Far be it from me to question Master.”

Sully walked to the playroom door, glanced down the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, and shut it. “I wanted to prove a point.

I also didn’t want to force you into telling her a lie.”

“So you’ll lie to her?”

Sully shrugged. “I haven’t lied. She hasn’t asked me what happened. Pretty obvious I took care of a leg cramp though, right?”

He winked.

Mac laughed and shook his head. “Son of a bitch, you’re a sneaky fuck, aren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a sneaky fuck, Master.”

Sully held up three fingers.

“It’s worth it,” Mac said. “You want to give them to me now or later?”

“In the morning. Go clean up. You can put on a pair of shorts if you want. Doreen should be begging her head off in a few minutes.”

* * *

Clarisse returned to her spot in the kitchen where she could look over the counter and watch the events in the living room from a safe distance. Alex used several ropes to bind Doreen, who had stripped, in a kneeling position on one of the benches. He started warming her up with a good spanking.

Sully reappeared first and poured himself a glass of iced tea. “You all right?” he asked Clarisse.

“Peachy.”

He smirked before he returned to the living room.

When Mac emerged from their bedroom, he had removed the cuffs and donned a pair of shorts. He walked into the kitchen and stood next to Clarisse. “You all right?”

“I’m fine!” She realized how short she sounded. “Sorry. Sully just asked me.” Sully was helping Alex do something to Doreen. When Sully stepped to the side, she realized he held a vibrator in his hand, which he’d shoved between Doreen’s spread and bound legs.

Another irrational wave of jealousy—or was it envy—washed through her.

“What’s he doing?” she whispered to Mac.

Mac slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Sully helps out like that. Not everyone, just a few friends. Makes it more intense for the sub.”

Alex stood in front of Doreen, pinching and twisting her nipples as she wriggled against her bonds.

Then Sully’s stern order. “Don’t you dare come yet. You haven’t been given permission.”

Doreen squealed in frustration and started begging. “Please, Sir?

Please let me come!”

“No. You don’t come until I tell you to.”

Tears ran down the woman’s face as the two men mercilessly tormented her. Sully said, “Hold it until I say so.”

“I can’t—”

“You will, or your Master will whip your ass.”

She bucked her hips, trying to escape the vibrator Sully kept pressed against her clit. “Hold it,” he ordered.

Clarisse instinctively pressed closer to Mac, unable to sort through the emotions and desires rolling through her.

“Please, Sir! Please let me come!” Doreen’s begging fell on deaf ears as Sully continued to torment her.

Finally, he said, “All right, come now!”

Doreen screamed, sobbed as her back rounded and an explosive climax ripped through her. Sully didn’t relent, keeping the vibrator pressed against her. “Again, come now!”

She screamed again, sobbing and wriggling, trying to get away from the devious device, but Sully and Alex weren’t through with her yet. Alex helped hold her down as Sully pulled the vibrator away and replaced it with his other hand. “Come again, now!”

Her screams dissolved into ragged sobs as he made her come four more times in quick succession before he stopped. When she limply collapsed onto the bench, Sully left the room. Alex stepped in and took over, draped his arm across her back and whispered to her.

Clarisse, her brain swirling, realized she was stiffly standing against Mac.

Mac gently shook her. “Fry your brain?”

“Did she really come that many times?”

Mac laughed. “Oh, yeah. She loves to play like this, especially with her job. Gives her a way to release her stress.”

“Why? What does she do?”

“She’s a criminal prosecutor with the circuit court. Alex is a family law attorney.”

Clarisse tried to absorb that information. “Where’d Sully go?” She felt like she could barely talk.

“Washing his hands, probably.”

Ew.

Okay, that finished her off. She disengaged herself from Mac, mumbled an apology, and returned to her room. She shut and locked the door behind her.

What the fuck?

She turned on her TV and, for good measure, used the MP3 player and headphones. She couldn’t focus on anything but the sights and sounds of the evening.

Mac.

The way Sully made Doreen beg to come.

The jealousy she’d felt over Mac.

Okay, fuck, yes, the jealousy she’d felt watching Sully with Doreen.

It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. She should be sickened or at the very least unmoved, shouldn’t she? Not…

Horny.

She closed her eyes and pulled a pillow over her head. At some point she drifted to sleep, but she dreamed of both Sully and Mac taking turns fucking her while she was bound to a bench. When she woke up and removed the headphones, she couldn’t hear anything but the TV. The clock read three-thirty, and when she shut off the TV, the house sounded quiet.

Cautiously, she unlocked her bedroom door and peeked out. The house stood empty, dark, silent. Apparently, they’d already cleaned up, because the living room had been put back to normal and the slip covers removed.

Clarisse closed her door and undressed before slipping under the covers with her mind a swirling mass of confused emotions.

Chapter Twelve

The next morning, Clarisse leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched Mac wash dishes. Weird. What did it say about her that she’d quickly come to see a naked man in a collar washing dishes as a normal fixture in her world?

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, startling her.

“What?”

He turned from the sink, that playful smile on his face. “What’s rolling around that pretty brain of yours, kiddo?”

From the heat in her face, she knew she was blushing.

“Honestly?”

His smile faded. He dried his hands on the dishtowel and leaned against the counter. “Always. Total honesty, you know that. It’s law in this house.”

She tried to keep her eyes off his cock and her mind off how she’d dreamed about it plunging deep into her…

Clarisse sat at the table. “How can you let him do this to you?”

“Do what?”

“Treat you the way he treats you?”

Mac pulled out his chair, the one he kept a towel on, and sat across from her. His voice softened. “Treats me how?”

With his cock safely out of sight under the table, she met his eyes.

“You’re his slave.”

A hint of a smile returned to his face. “That’s sort of the whole point. You hadn’t guessed that by now?”

“How can you do that? Let him run your life.”

“I love him.”

“How do you know he won’t throw you out one day?”

Mac shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t. I don’t know that any more than he knows I won’t up and leave one day. I’m not held hostage, if you haven’t noticed. I’m here willingly. We trust and love each other.”