Tymber Dalton - The Reluctant Dom

“You wouldn’t be happy if I did that.”

She shook her head.

He took a deep breath. “We’re not, like, going to be talking about this at breakfast tomorrow or anything, are we?”

She finally smiled. “No.”

“Because that would push me over the fucking edge, man.”

Leah caressed his cheek. “No. We don’t have to talk about things.”

“It’s bad enough… I feel bad enough as it is. My weird-o-meter would shoot off the scale if I had to talk to Kaden about this kind of stuff.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell him that. But it’ll make him happy that you’re finally letting me take care of you like this.”

“I so cannot get my head around that.”

“That’s okay. He understands.”

After another long moment, he brought her hands up to his lips and kissed them. “All right. I’m not comfortable with… Let’s take this one step at a time. Okay? If I let you…” He silently swore. “Just hand jobs. For now. Okay? Don’t try to push me to take the next step yet. I mean hey, you got to sleep in bed with me, right? I’ll get there, but I need time to get used to this and try to get over feeling fucking guilty about it. Promise?”

She nodded.

He released her hands after a final, gentle squeeze. “Magic fingers, do your stuff.”

He’d kill for the bright smile she gave him. His heart melted. This was so fucked up on so many levels, but it was worth it to see her smile.

Seth recalled he was approximately the same size as Kade. So unless his friend had suddenly mutated, that was, at least, one less metaphorical shoe for him to fill. He didn’t want to disappoint Leah.

She turned, straddling his legs again. He lifted his hips so she could pull his trunks down and off him. He closed his eyes and heard the wet splat as she dropped his trunks out of the hot tub and onto the lanai. He laid his head back against the edge of the hot tub and tried not to moan too loudly as her fingers gently wrapped around his shaft.

It was amazing. With one hand cupping and milking his sac, her other slowly massaging his cock, he knew it wouldn’t take her long to get him off.

Hell, her hand job was better than any fucking blow job he’d ever gotten in his life! She took her time, drawing it out, caressing him in a way…

In a way no one had ever touched him before.

The right fucking woman. How had he never had the right woman before?

Before Leah.

It built deep in his balls. When he tensed, Leah seemed to anticipate his release. She tightened her grip and squeezed what felt like every last drop out of him, leaving him spent and trembling in the water.

Damn.

It never felt that good when he did it himself.

Reading his body, Leah stilled her hands without releasing him. He eventually opened his eyes.

Her smile lit every inch of her face, for once erasing a few of the grief lines slowly attempting to take over. “Thank you,” she said.

He laughed. “No, thank you.”

She leaned forward. He thought she might kiss him, but she simply touched her forehead to his. “You have a very nice cock, Sir.”

“Don’t harsh the mellow, girl.”

She giggled and gently squeezed him. He didn’t think he’d be up for more and was extremely surprised to feel himself stiffen in her hands.

“Ooh!” she cooed. “Seconds.”

He laughed and closed his eyes again. He lasted longer this time, due in no small part to her talented skills in bringing him close and letting him cool off. When he exploded the second time he grabbed her and pulled her into his lap, holding her tightly, his face buried in her hair.

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?

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.”