“Cursing already?” Brett asked as he poured himself a scotch. “We haven’t even started playing.”
Colin grinned at him. “Look who finally decided to show his face. Been keeping Kayla to yourself this week? I didn’t see you two last night.” Grabbing a beer, Colin joined him at the table.
Scowling, Brett replied, “She kicked me out, told me to ‘go play with the boys for a while’.”
“If I know you, and I do, you’re already planning her punishment.”
“She does get off on a good spanking. I’ve created a monster.” His feigned sigh of suffering was belied by the grin splitting his face.
“From that grin and the pleased look on your face I’d say you’re rather fond of your monster. Seriously, she’s a cutie, I’m glad you quit fighting the attraction.”
And, if he was honest with himself,
Colin thought
, he was also envious of Brett’s good fortune
.
Brett sipped his drink before sighing deeply. “She’s still too young and nothing will change that, but I’ll be damned if she isn’t turning out to be everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Life’s short, as we both know. You may as well enjoy it while you can.”
“Is that why you’ve finally decided to go after Olivia?” Brett asked him point blank.
Colin started shuffling the cards when he saw Mitch walk in with Donovan. “I’m just helping a friend,” he answered evasively, the circumstances surrounding his relationship with Olivia completely different from why Brett had refused Kayla for so long. “I promised Doug I’d look out for her if anything ever happened to him. I’m just keeping my promise.”
“Yeah, right,” Mitch said as he and Donovan took their seats. “If you’re talking about Olivia, that rhetoric doesn’t wash. I saw the look on your face when I had my hands all over her and especially when I had my dick in her mouth.” When Colin scowled and glared at him, all three men laughed. “Exactly,” he said succinctly.
“And here I was planning to ask you if you’d take her on now that I’ve broken the ice for her. She seemed comfortable with you and I’m too close to her to give her everything she needs.” Colin ignored their knowing looks, looks that said they knew he was lying through his teeth, and dealt the cards.
Donovan snorted at that as he popped the tab on his Pepsi. “That’s your excuse for keeping her at arm’s length? Can’t you think of anything better than that?”
“She doesn’t want me, Colin,” Mitch said quietly, his eyes steady on his friend. “Do you really think she’d go for switching doms that easily?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what she wants, all I know is I’m not the man for her, other than as a friend. And that’s not an excuse,” he said glaring at Donovan. “That’s a fact.”
Donovan recognized the closed look on Colin’s face only too well. He knew he often wore one similar to it when one of his brothers prodded him about his demons, demons he had no intention of sharing with them, ever. Nodding, he replied simply, “Good enough for me if it is for you.”
But it wasn’t, and deep down, Colin knew that. He wanted her and that was his cross to bear as were the reasons he couldn’t have her. Picking up his hand, he let Mitch and Donovan steer the banter towards Brett, ribbing him good naturedly about finally succumbing to Kayla’s charming ways. Their deep laughter echoed in the otherwise silent bar. He enjoyed this quiet time as much as he did the loud, busy Friday and Saturday nights.
The three of them had opened Casey’s after their father died, a tribute to the man who never failed to let them know he loved them despite the irresponsible way he lived most of his life. Despite working for the Sheriff’s department, Colin had known he would be the one to run the place; Brett had too much on his plate handling the legal ends of both McGilley Farms and the club as well as those of his other clients and Donovan put in over sixty hours a week running the farm which left little time for him to work the bar. Besides, Donovan’s social skills were definitely lacking and if he ever had to spend more than an hour or two covering for Colin behind the bar on a weekend night, he would probably run off customers before the night was over. Before he left the Sheriff’s office, the bar was only open on Saturday nights, but since leaving after Doug’s death, he was now open Tuesday through Saturday and was turning a nice profit to add to the profits from the farm.
Seeing Olivia sitting at the hand crafted, teak wood bar that first night had seemed right, so right it made him wonder if he could forgive himself for letting her down and give a shot at claiming what he’d wanted for so long a try. He now knew he simply couldn’t risk not being a part of her life at all for the slim to none chance he had of more.
“Hell, you really do have your head in the clouds, don’t you?” Mitch said when Colin simply folded after barely glancing at his cards. Known for bluffing, he rarely folded until he had gotten at least one raise out of everyone.
“Just play your hand,” Colin growled, ignoring the knowing smirks from his brothers.
Olivia pushed the lawnmower through yet another pile of leaves, the sun beating down on her back a warm balm for the cool air. She loved fall, the bright, vibrant colors of amber, bright orange and brick red leaves falling on the still green grass. Thanks to some unseasonably warm weather, she was still cutting her grass and mulching leaves even though it was the second week of November. Thankfully, she enjoyed working in her small yard, enjoyed the adrenaline exercise benefit the mundane task of mowing gave her while leaving her mind free to wander where it willed. Today, as it had every day this past week, her thoughts drifted to Colin and her body’s reaction to his commands the last two weekends.
Almost instantly, her nipples peaked and her pussy swelled with an aching need that had yet to be assuaged. The orgasms she had experienced after so long a dry spell had helped to relax her, but had done little to give her that total release from stress that she craved. Between the constant desire to achieve that goal and her growing feelings for Colin, she found herself more tense than usual despite the pleasure he was responsible for. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy using his hand to masturbate with that first night or that she hadn’t gotten off under Master Mitch’s tutelage, but as enjoyable as those experiences were, they weren’t enough. She wanted to be fucked, taken long and hard, filled so tightly, so deeply that her mind fractured with the pleasure, disintegrating everything except the pleasure.
But after last week, after seeing how easily Colin had turned her over to Mitch and the cold, closed expression on his face when Mitch had brought her to climax followed by her giving him that same pleasure, she knew he had only agreed to her request to top her because of his promise to Doug. Olivia valued his friendship too much to risk losing it over what she was sure he just considered sex but was turning out to be so much more for her. He was the only one she had trusted enough to do this for her, the only other man other than her husband that she had felt an attraction to that was strong enough to have her wanting to submit to him totally. She never considered acting on that attraction, not even after their night together. It had just been recently that she had begun to see the potential of Colin being more to her than a friend.
But now that she suspected whatever attraction he might have once felt towards her beyond friendship was either a figment of her imagination or long gone and that she now knew she could respond to another dom, the only right thing to do was to relieve him of the obligation she knew he felt towards her because of his friendship with Doug, and possibly, because of their one night together.
Shutting off the mower, Olivia looked around the small yard with its fence hugging gardens and now freshly cut lawn. This had been Doug’s house when she met him and she had lived here for almost five years. Two of those years were as a new bride and sub, blissfully happy and content with her life, three years as a grief stricken, subdued widow wallowing in memories as time went by without her. Glancing at the back of the red brick house, she thought maybe it was time for more than one change in her life. She had been contemplating selling and finding a place she could call her own, a place she could take the good memories to while leaving behind the bad. A place that could, maybe, help her to move on.
Another attempt to move on would begin tonight. Colin had gotten her back in the door, now it was up to her to enter the lifestyle she wanted the rest of the way on her own. She knew she could trust anyone at the McGilley’s private club, that whatever dom she chose and who would agree to top her tonight would be safe, so that just left the matter of releasing Colin from his commitment to her, one she had asked for and still wanted, but knew he didn’t.
It was close to one a.m. by the time Colin shut down the bar and headed upstairs. He had been in a pissy mood all day and he knew it was because of his decision to turn Olivia over to someone else tonight, but that didn’t explain why his sour disposition only got worse as the evening wore on and she never showed up. Stepping into the elevator, he watched the doors close quietly and listened to the hum of the lift as he wondered for the millionth time why she hadn’t come out, or even called to let him know she wasn’t planning on being here tonight. He had finally tried her phone only to have it go straight to voice mail. When she didn’t return his call, his irritation had turned to worry and as the elevator opened to let him out, he quickly scanned the large open room for one of his brothers. Spotting both of them sitting with a few other people, he strode over.
“What took you so long? Couldn’t you get someone to shut down for you tonight?” Brett asked Colin as he idly toyed with Kayla’s right nipple, her breasts completely bared for all to enjoy.
Normally Colin would take a moment to enjoy the sight of such a nice rack, but his concern for Olivia out-weighed everything else. “Mitch called in sick and Carl is out of town, so no, I couldn’t get away sooner. Look, Olivia never showed up and she isn’t answering her phone so I’m going to drive to her place and check on her. Can one of you…”
“She’s in the bondage room,” Donovan interrupted him quietly, his green eyes giving nothing away.
Colin felt his worry dissipate only to be quickly replaced with anger. She was here and hadn’t let him know? “In the bondage room, without me?” he questioned softly. “And you let her?”
Donovan threw up both hands in mock surrender as Brett chuckled. “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Besides, she went willingly and I’ve kept an eye on things in there. Last we heard, this is what you wanted and had planned.”
“Who?” Colin wanted to know who she had replaced him with, who was touching his sub without permission, who was…doing exactly as he had intended for someone to do tonight, just like Brett said. Taking over for him as Olivia’s Dom.
“Jase Somers,” Donovan answered, his eyes steady on Colin, seeing a lot more than he would ever let on.
“Shit.” Sinking onto a vacant chair facing them, he looked with brooding eyes from Brett’s content, aroused face to Kayla’s pretty face dominated by those bright blue eyes and shrouded with her wavy black hair to Donovan’s quiet, nonjudgmental look. “Jase is a good guy, careful. He’ll give her what she needs.” And that bothered him more than he had anticipated when he had decided to go back to being just her friend.
“Who’re you trying to convince, Colin?”
Colin glanced sharply at Kayla, opened his mouth to rebuke her and tell her to mind her own business, but both Brett’s stern look and his own conscience stopped him before he could make a bigger ass of himself. Kayla was just being Kayla, open and honest to a fault. Shrugging, he admitted, “I had planned on turning her over to someone else tonight, she just got to that decision first.” And, for no explainable reason, it wasn’t sitting well with him at all. He had to physically sit here and force himself to keep from barging down the hall and pulling them apart, which, he admitted with a self-derogatory sigh, was completely asinine of him considering his intentions tonight. God, that woman had him so fucked up.
“Yes, but as her dom, that was your decision and one she could have accepted or turned down. But, and correct me if I’m wrong,” Brett paused, pinching Kayla’s nipple when she snorted at that comment, then continued saying, “but as your sub, doesn’t she need your permission before latching on to someone else?”
“That’s the way I always heard it should be. The sub follows her doms orders until the relationship is severed by one or both of them,” Donovan chimed in.
Colin pulled his head out of the clouds enough to see what they were doing, tossing the ball back in his court, and if he wasn’t so anxious to get to Olivia, he’d take a moment to embarrass them all and hug them. “You know, you’re right,” he replied slowly as he stood back up. “Protocol dictates she should’ve come to me first and ended our agreement before moving on, otherwise it should have been my call to allow another man to top her.” Smiling at them, knowing they pointed that out to him to give him an excuse to confront her and give him time to come to terms with these conflicting emotions roiling through him. His brothers knew him better than he knew himself sometimes. Without another word, he headed down the hall.
Colin entered the bondage room, scanned quickly for Olivia, spotted her strapped down over a spanking bench and saw red, literally. Her round buttocks as well as her thighs were bright red. Jase held a round leather paddle in one hand and was fingering her pussy with the other, a look of concern and worry on his face when he pulled his hand back and his fingers came out dry. Bending over her, he asked her something, received a vigorous denial from her and, with a tightening of his jaw indicating his frustration and distaste, moved to stand behind her again.
The red Colin now saw was anger as he quickly strode over to them. “Stop,” he commanded Jase before he could land another blow on her already abused ass. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Hell if I know. She keeps insisting she wants to continue, but she’s definitely not getting off on this scene.” Frustration and concern were evident in Jase’s tone as well as the look he kept casting toward Olivia. “Got any suggestions?”