Roxy Harte (31 page)

Garrett lifts a hand for me to remain silent and I do.

“Kitten,” Garrett speaks softly. “You’ve asked for us to share you, but the real question is, can you share as well, because the only way this will work is if the three of us become a committed ménage à trois for real, a working threesome.” Garrett looks at me with desperation. He really wants her back. He loves her and at this point will agree to anything. I love her too and, for the sake of all of us, plan on making it so that he never regrets this.

There is silence on the other side.

“Kitten?” Garrett asks.

Harsh silence answers, not mute, the tunnel sound of being on speaker phone remains. Then a bare whisper comes across the line, Charlie’s voice making comforting noises. “Hey, Charlie,” I call out.

“Everything okay there?”

“No, guys, everything isn’t okay. She thinks that you will both say whatever it takes to get her back there with you and then the fight over her will begin again. She’s seen Jackie’s manipulative power in
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action enough over the last few months to know that the thing with Jackie isn’t over. Celia’s wrung out.

Emotional doesn’t even begin to describe what I’ve got going on over here. Damn you two! I saw her through the Kitten Sightings and that was a rollercoaster to hell and back, this…this is worse.”

“Let us come over there,” I suggest. “Just to talk, she doesn’t have to leave with us. We just want to see her.”

“She’s shaking her head no, man, and I hate to agree but I think she needs a minute to breathe. So, I’ll stay with her until she’s ready for me to take her home, or until she says she wants you to pick her up,”

Charlie answers. “One thing. Were you both serious about this ménage à trois?”

“Yes,” we both answer.

In the background, muffled, we hear him ask her if she wants him to disconnect.

When Charlie comes back to us, he says, “She wants to know why you think that Jackie’s reaction is because of you, Thomas, not her?”

I shake my head, really not wanting to answer this, especially not wanting to answer this with Garrett listening. This could ruin everything, but then Jackie’s poisonous tongue could ruin everything, too. Better to come clean with my side of the story. I look up at Garrett, capturing his gaze and holding it. I need the eye contact as I explain it to both of them. “It’s an old grudge from years ago. We played once, when she was he. He thought he wanted to play hard but he wasn’t up to it. I was too young and dumb to let him safe word out. I wanted to teach him a lesson that he couldn’t just pick up random players off the street, that it was dangerous. I didn’t hurt him, but I scared the hell out of him. Made him think I was going to cut him up, make him a girl for real.”

“So that’s why she doesn’t play anymore,” Garrett whispers, nodding. He breaks eye contact, looking away. I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction and when he turns back to me, he says, “Thank you for telling me.”

“So, Kitten, that’s why Jackie doesn’t play and that’s why she hates me.” I talk into the speaker. “I’ve apologized more than once, but she won’t accept it. I scared her for real and I really didn’t mean to, and didn’t realize it until it was too late.”

“She never told me,” Garrett says, patting my leg, letting me know that he isn’t going to defend her honor at this late date. To Kitten, he implores, “Let us come and get you now, Kitten. Only together can we fix this.”

“No!” Her voice is a scream over the speaker, still having that panicked edge to it. I’m worried.

Garrett’s worried. I think we both consider ignoring her wishes and driving to Charlie’s for her, but when our eyes meet, it is with the understanding that he won’t go without me and I won’t go without him.

Her voice comes over the speaker, calmer, but not by much. “Not yet. If you’re seriously ready for this to work, another day won’t make a difference. And I’m safe on Charlie’s couch.”

“She is so on my couch—nothing is going on here,” Charlie assures us.

“You were awfully quick to say that Charlie,” I warn him with my voice.

He snorts. “There’s two of you…both of you over six feet and I’m betting close to four hundred pounds
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of muscle between you. If you didn’t notice, I’m squirrelly boy. Five-feet-two-inches, one-hundred-and-twelve pounds of skin and bones. I have no desire to fight you guys over a girl. I love her but she’s like my sister. Besides, I’ve seen the two of you go at it.”

“You saw our tussle at the club?” I ask, not remembering him there.

“I saw the cam cast and that was too close for comfort.” He laughs, but it isn’t really a laugh, just nervousness.

“Understood,” I say, hanging up. No niceties, no good-bye for Kitten, no I love you, nothing. I do look at Garrett, wondering what he’s thinking, sitting behind his desk, bent over, his forehead resting on his arm. For a second, our eyes meet and he shakes his head, answering my unasked question with his own manner of silence.

“So you just lied to her?”

Garrett looks up at me but doesn’t answer.

“You have no intention of creating a ménage à trois, you were just spewing words to try to get her here.”

“That isn’t true.”

“I think you’re lying, Garrett. Lying to her, lying to yourself. If, for once in your life, you are going to be honest with yourself, let it be now.”

Garrett stands, arms crossed, defensive. “How am I not being honest? I said we will, we will.”

I close the distance between us, leaning into him. “Be honest with yourself, Garrett. Admit that you are doing this as much for yourself as her. Admit that you want me back in your life. Admit that sometimes you just want to be that guy who met me the first time on the beach. You want to be helpless, and used, scared out of your mind, humiliated…” Feeling his tremble, I know I’m pushing the right buttons. I lift his chin and whisper against his cheek, “Cherished.”

“What do you want me to say? That yes, I still think about it, the times you mastered me, teaching me how to master others.”

“Admit that there was more to it than that.”

Lifting his chin stubbornly, he insists, “No. There wasn’t more. I loved Tony.” I feel the lie in the tremble beneath my hand.

“Take down the walls, Garrett,” I whisper, brushing his cheek with my beard. “It’s just me and you here.

If we are going to try to do this with Kitten, we can’t hide behind old lies.” I pull him into me, his crossed arms becoming his own trap. I hold him tight, not that I need to; I’m surprised that he doesn’t resist. “Are you ready then to just give yourself to me…after years of refusing this? Or will you fight me?”

I watch his every reaction to me, closed eyes, chewed lip, heavy breathing. I know his blood is boiling. I know his every trigger, but I don’t hit any of them. Just merely touching him has sent him into sub mode. I didn’t want that. I wanted his resistance. I wanted him to face the truth.

Finally, between clenched teeth, he demands, “Let me go, Thomas.”

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He doesn’t have to ask twice.

Facing him, I watch a million emotions flood over his face.

“I told myself that it was because you were my first Master. I told Kitten the same thing…that over time, she would forget you…that it was only because you brought out her darkness that you made her want you so desperately. I lied. There’s a decade between then and now, Thomas, and I still want what you can give me. I feel like an addict. I wake mid-dream and it is your voice in my head, always your voice.”

I reach out, cupping his face, his stubble rough against my palm. “So you want the three of us to share?

Equally?”

“Yes, it’s what I want.” He sighs. “It’s killing me that I want you. I pushed it aside, all of these years I’ve buried it, but I still need you. I am such a hypocrite. In my head, I condemn her for wanting no more than I want.”

“It isn’t wrong to want us both, Garrett.”

“Yes, it’s wrong. After all the years I lived with Tony, hating that he needed other men, knowing that I wasn’t enough to complete him, and just wanting to be his everything…how can I dare do the same to Kitten?”

I reach out to touch him but he pulls away. “What the three of us will share cannot be compared to what Tony did to you.” Garrett tenses visibly, I think he knows I don’t plan to sugarcoat it. “Supposedly, you and Tony had a committed, monogamous relationship, excluding clients of course, but he chose to cheat.

Repeatedly. He fucked around. Bathhouses, back alleys, under your nose at the club…he did what he did in secret, but in full view of anyone paying attention. Whether he wanted you to know or not is debatable, but the fact of the matter is, even after he was caught, even after you asked him to stop, he still cheated.” He looks at me with hatred but I know he doesn’t hate me, he hates the truth. I reach out to touch him, he doesn’t pull away. “You won’t be cheating on Kitten and Kitten won’t be cheating on you. It isn’t the same.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I know. I just don’t want to—I don’t want…”

“You don’t want to hurt Kitten and you don’t want to be hurt again, I understand.”

“We have to stumble through so much dirt before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.”

-Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Kitten

My mind races at a million miles an hour, wondering, thinking too much, trying to figure out if the two Doms in my life were being truthful and will honestly share me; or whether they lied, saying anything, agreeing to anything, just to get me within hands’ reach. Neither man has lied to me before, but I don’t see either of them willingly sharing me either.

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I sit behind my desk, looking blankly at my computer screen open to days of unanswered emails, hoping I look officially very busy. Occasionally, I even remember to scroll. I couldn’t stay at Charlie’s place alone and he couldn’t sit there with nothing to do all day but hold my hand, so when he left for the office, I went with him, coming straight to my office, leaving the door open. Closed is too claustrophobic.

In the three hours I’ve been here, I’ve decided that either the reception desk is getting moved to the other side of the building or my office is changing locales, because the receptionist is out of control.

Answering all of the calls on speaker phone, she is driving me insane.

Ring, ring.

Just pick up the God damn phone!

“Thank you for calling
The Darkness
, where your twisted secrets are our business, how may I help you?”

I asked her to turn it off speaker. She argued that it is easier to multi-task if her hands are free for other things. Thirty transfers to four different departments, two personal calls, and one solicitor later, all within the last hour and I’m ready to disconnect her.

“This is
Inappropriate Voices
, right?” A man’s deep voice booms through her speaker swelling the room. My ears perk up, instantly recognizing the unwanted voice from my past, days of sermons, nights of promises…

I leave my desk, planning to tell Hannah to dump the call, but hear her explaining, “I’m sorry she isn’t doing any interviews.”

“I don’t want to interview her!” Lion’s voice comes over the speaker in scream decibel, but not screaming, pure pulpit projection. “It’s about her father and I need to talk to her immediately.”

My knees go weak and I lean into the doorframe for support. Heart pounding, body trembling, I respond to his command as if he’s here in the room. Seeing me, Hannah pantomimes at me the question,

“Do you want to take the call?”

I whisper, voice shaking, hoping she doesn’t hear my voice shake, “Transfer him, Hannah!” I know she hears me because she nods that she will.

My hand shakes above the receiver as I wait for the call to come through. I lift the handset to my ear when I see the light, not hearing the soft buzz. “Lion?”

“Hey, Jane…sorry, Celia…ah Kat…oh hell, what do you want me to call you?”

“Celia’s fine but I asked you to not call me. I really don’t want any contact with you or my father or my past. My life is way too complicated for this. Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Your father’s in intensive care, but if you don’t care…”

I sit down hard in my cushioned desk chair, but there is nothing soft to it.

“Are you there? Do you really not care at all?”

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“What happened?” I whisper, trying not to care, trying really, really hard not to care when he tells me that my father just had a heart attack and that they are prepping him for surgery.

“They can’t wait long enough for you to get here. I’m sorry, machines are all that’s keeping him alive.

They really don’t know if he’ll survive the surgery, but they assure me that they have the top cardiovascular surgeon at UC doing the job, Dr. Steve Lowenstein. I wanted you to know so you could stay near a phone, in case you wanted updates.”

I swallow, a million thoughts going through my head, the one winning out being how fast can I get on a plane. I press hold without telling him, screaming for Hannah. She appears in my doorway as if she’d been standing there all along, but I don’t bother to comment. “Get me on the next flight toCincinnati , no stops, no layovers. Use the company card.”

She starts to say something but, meeting my eyes, she doesn’t. When she walks away, I know she’ll do as she was instructed and make the arrangements. Reconnecting to Lion, I’m glad he waited. “I’ll be on the next flight. I’ll be there.”

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