Kyle’s Bargain (16 page)

“I do the best I can. And who knows what the future will
bring? Anyway, enough depressing stuff. Tell me more about your friends before
we get to their place. I want to have some idea what to expect.”

“I told you Rick was my college roommate, didn’t I? We got
along really well from the get-go. Lots of interests and outlooks in common
even before we discovered we shared some kinky sexual tastes. I found some of
his reading material one day early in our acquaintance and was fascinated. That
was when I realized that all those strange fantasies I never dared mention to
anyone else weren’t as unusual as I’d thought. We even ventured out to a BDSM
club once or twice, but neither of us was entirely comfortable with it. Some of
the fraternity parties we went to were weird enough.” He laughed and hoped she
wouldn’t ask for details.

“After we graduated, Rick got a job offer in New York and
moved away for a while, but a few years later he decided to come back to DC and
got a position with a marketing firm here. He met Lindy through work. She’s a
software developer and her company hired Rick’s to help market their latest
whiz-bang product. They were attracted to each other from the start but of
course they couldn’t do anything about it while their companies were in
negotiations. He’d started going to BDSM clubs again with me when he got back,
but then I stopped during Rita’s illness and afterward. He happened to see
Lindy at one of the clubs and was stunned to realize she might share his kinky
sexual tastes. But she’s pretty shy and he wasn’t sure how to approach her at
the club. Rick talked to a couple of her friends, including the one she came to
the club with and found out she had no experience in the scene and wasn’t very
confident of her own attractiveness. She was just interested and dubious. He
talked it over with me because he was afraid he’d scare her off, so we hatched
this plot with her friend…well, we kind of set her up. It gave her a way to
experiment with kinky sex that would give everyone an out if it didn’t work but
would pretty much guarantee she was safe, no matter what happened.”

“You set her up? And she still speaks to either of you?”

“We told her what we’d done and why we’d done it that same
evening. She understood and she was so thrilled at the discoveries she made,
she forgave us pretty readily.”

“I don’t know if I’d be that forgiving.”

“You’re not Lindy. You’re much more confident and secure
about yourself than she is. She needed our bit of underhandedness to get her
over her fears and self-doubt.”

“That’s pretty damn arrogant,” Meg said.

“But it worked.”

“That’s a point.”

“Just about there,” Kyle said as he turned into the condo
complex where Rick lived. “They’re officially engaged now. Lindy moved in with
him about a month ago.” He found a space not far from their front door and
parked. He opened the door for Meg, giving her a reassuring smile when she
hesitated.

He tried to keep his own nervousness about the evening from
showing.

Meg hoped Kyle couldn’t see how nervous she was about
meeting his friends. She couldn’t decide if she worried more about them liking
her or her liking them. Either way it mattered a lot to Kyle. Their
relationship might hinge on this.

The man who answered Kyle’s knock on the door was taller and
thinner than Kyle, with a square jaw, reddish-brown hair and green eyes. His
smile lit his face and turned it from nice to handsome, showing laugh lines
around his eyes and mouth.

“Hey! Come on in,” he said, waving an arm to invite her into
a comfortably furnished living room. “I’m about to get the chicken off the
grill and I think Lindy’s wrestled the cucumber into submission. It was last
seen rolling off the cutting board, trying to avoid the knife.”

A female voice floated from the back of the apartment.
“Watch it. I’ll tell them about that first batch of marinade you made up. Beer
and lemon juice?”

He grinned. “Sounded like a good idea at the time. Didn’t
smell too good, though. Neither one of us is a gourmet cook,” he explained.
“Take your chances.” He looked at Meg and stuck out a hand. “Since Kyle’s a bit
slow on the draw, let me introduce myself. Rick Lowery.”

Meg took the extended palm. “Meg Travis.”

Kyle harrumphed dramatically. “I’d’ve done the honors, but
as usual I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

“Gripe, gripe.” Rick turned toward the hallway that led back
to where the kitchen must be. “Come meet Lindy.”

“The cucumber has bowed in submission,” a female voice said.

“More than can be said for the salad maker,” Rick answered.

“Ha. What about— Oh.” The woman tossing salad in the bowl
looked up and smiled at Kyle. “Sorry about that.” She transferred the grin to
Meg, waiting.

Kyle leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Lindy, this is Meg,”
he said.

Lindy blushed, and said, “Hi, Meg. I’m incredibly glad to
meet you. Kyle has talked about you.”

“Good things, I hope.”

“Of course.”

“The standards are pretty minimal,” Kyle said. “They’re grateful
for anyone who’ll look at me twice.”

“We’re not going to inflate your ego by denying it,” Rick
answered.

“Can I do anything to help?” Meg asked.

“Drinks,” Lindy said as she grated a carrot for the salad.
“We have wine, beer and soft drinks. Rick will have the beer, Kyle and I the
wine and you can have your choice. All in the fridge, glasses in the cabinet
over there.”

Meg fought a flash of irritation that this woman knew Kyle
well enough to tell her what he’d choose to drink. The men went out a door to
the patio in the back to check on the meat on the grill. Meg got out the beer
and wine.

“Don’t mind what Rick and Kyle say,” Lindy commented.
“They’re forever riding each other. I think it’s a guy thing.” She flashed a
look at Meg. “Kyle said you knew about us and…”

“That you do threesomes?” Meg reached for the glasses. “He
told me. It’s okay. I understand. I think. Anyway, I gather that his
relationship with you and Rick is very special to him. It was a tremendous help
in his recovery from his wife’s death.”

“Shoot. He helped us more than we helped him. Me, mainly,”
she admitted. “I don’t know if I would’ve been able to go through with it, to
do what Rick wanted me to do.” Lindy glanced up at Meg, and said, “Funny thing
is it’s not the submission or discipline part of it that intimidated me. At
least not so much. I’m really pretty much of a chicken when it comes to social
things. I’m just so not good at them. I’m a geek all the way down to my toes.
Better with computers than with people.”

“That’s not what I hear from Kyle.”

Lindy glanced out the window toward where the men stood
before she looked back at Meg. “Kyle’s a good man, a kind and generous man,
though he does everything he can to hide the fact.”

“I’d picked it up. In fact, he’s going out of his way to
help me and some of my friends.”

“He told us about the changes to his grand scheme.”

“His ‘grand scheme’?”

“That’s what we call it. That shopping center project. He’s
been dreaming this thing and working on plans for years. It’s his first really
big venture and it’s likely to make or break his future in the business.”

“It’s really that critical to him?”

“Even more,” Lindy said, “But it’s not something I can talk
about it. Suffice it to say he has a more personal stake in it as well.”

“Something to prove,” Meg ventured as she handed a glass of
wine to Lindy.

“Something like that.” She glanced at the filled glasses.
“Want to take those out to the guys?”

“Sure.”

When she got out to the back, Meg found a table to one side
with an umbrella over it and four chairs around it. Placemats waited. Lindy
came out behind her with plates and silverware. “Set this out?” she asked
before scurrying back in for other things. The guys were discussing a recently
televised golf match.

Rick took the chicken off the grill, Lindy brought the salad
and rolls fresh from the oven out and they sat down to eat.

Meg had spent some time worrying over what to talk about
with the couple her lover joined with occasionally. She needn’t have. Rick and
Kyle were both extroverts who could carry conversations all by themselves if
needed. Between the two of them, they rarely left lulls big enough for a long
word to squeeze in. They weren’t rude, however, and drew Lindy and Meg into the
conversation with questions or comments. Meg found they respected her opinions
even when they didn’t agree with them.

Discussion ran through a variety of topics that included
Lindy’s company’s newest software project, Rick’s and Kyle’s golf games,
baseball, colleges and Meg’s bookstore. At one point, Rick went in and got
another beer for himself and brought out the bottle of wine for everyone else.
A bit later, Lindy fixed coffee and brought out a tray with the carafe, cups,
cream and sugar.

Their talk flowed on and on while the sun sank low and
disappeared below the horizon. Meg found herself caught up in the rhythm of
sharing opinions on topics ranging from politics to economics to investment
ideas to families. They respected each others’ ideas and even when they
disagreed, as they frequently did, it was done in a calm, low-key way,
interspersed with gentle teasing that demonstrated better than anything else
how comfortable they all were with the others.

To discourage the inevitable insects, Lindy lit a couple of
citronella candles, which glowed brighter as the world darkened around them.
Her companions faded into shadowy figures illuminated only by the glow of the
candle.

Surprisingly, it was Lindy who brought up the subject of
their unusual sexual proclivities, though in an indirect way. “I understand you
met Charles and Cilla at the club a few days ago,” she said to Meg.

“We did.”

“They’re nice, aren’t they? It was such a surprise to me.”
Lindy hesitated. “I used to think people who did things like in BDSM were
horrible, perverted…you know, nasty. And I was ashamed of myself for wanting
some of those things, for fantasizing about them. It was sort of a shock to
meet otherwise normal, nice people who liked the same things and then to learn
that they had lives like everyone else with jobs and families and bills and houses
and lawn mowers.”

“But here we all are,” Kyle added. “Otherwise mostly normal
people, living otherwise mostly normal lives. We just like our sex a little
spicier and our special relationships a bit different.”

“And that’s what we’re wrestling with in our relationship
right now,” Rick admitted.

Kyle sounded surprised when he asked, “What?”

Somehow it seemed easier to talk about all this in the dark
where they couldn’t see each other very well.

“Some people can play the dominance-submission thing purely
as a sexual game,” Rick answered. “And we do too. But I’m not sure it’s right
for us to be limited to playing at it. We’re trying to figure out how to
incorporate it into our regular lives.” Meg thought he glanced at Kyle and then
at her, but the words appeared to be primarily addressed to his former
roommate. “Since you’ve been a major part of my life for a long time, and our
lives as a couple right from the start, we wanted to get your thoughts and
ideas.”

Kyle didn’t say anything for a moment. In the darkness his
hand sought hers and held it. Maybe aided by the subject of the conversation,
the warmth of his palm enveloping hers sent a shiver of desire running up and
down her spine.

“It’s hard to figure out how to balance things,” Rick
continued. “Lindy’s no doormat as you already know. She’s strong, smart and
self-sufficient. And I’m stronger, smarter and even more self-sufficient, but
I’m not a barbaria—Oof. Ouch.”

She couldn’t see whether Lindy had kicked or punched him.

“You’ll get a spanking for that, my girl,” he said.

Lindy giggled. “I’m counting on it.”

“Behave,” Rick said. “Or I’ll have Kyle take his belt to you
before they leave.”

“Uh-uh. I’m not getting into this one,” Kyle answered. “Work
it out yourselves, children.”

“And you see, there’s the problem,” Lindy said. “We have a
hard time not turning this into a game. Even though I really do want to be
submissive and I can be at times, in real life, it’s much harder to do.”

Kyle drew in a long slow breath. “I’ve been thinking about
the problem some myself,” he admitted. “It seems like one way might be to limit
it to certain times or certain areas.”

“Do a submissive Sunday or something like that?” Lindy
asked.

“Or agree that in certain things you will always submit to
Rick’s judgment. Maybe household finances?”

Rick laughed. “We’d be better off if I submitted to her on
that. Not going there.”

“And I don’t want to get involved in doing silly and stupid
things just to give him an opportunity to show his Mastery,” Lindy added. “I’m
not sure where that leaves us.”

“Still in love,” Rick said. “Still getting married in a
little less than a month.”

“Here’s a thought,” Kyle said. “How about bargains? Meg and
I have one going right now, though I’m not telling the details. If you haven’t
already, you’ll soon start bumping against things about each other that bother
or concern you. Use those as your starting point.”

No one spoke for a moment before Rick said, “It’s a thought.
Good one. We’ll talk about it more.”

After that the conversation drifted off to other, less
personal topics. They sat and talked for half an hour or so longer before Kyle
said it was time for them to leave.

They wasted no time when they got to Kyle’s home. He used a
leather strap to spank her for what seemed like a very long time. By the time he
finished, Meg’s bottom felt hot and sore. It had the usual effect, though. Heat
charged into her core, making her pussy swell and moisten.