I didn’t hate it at all.
Isabel looked so small next to Drake’s six-three frame. Her warm copper hair shone even brighter under the rose-colored lights. And I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through his head during their little rope-tying exploration. I didn’t have to wonder long because the moment Isabel moved to the side, everyone in the room, including me, got a view of his impressive reaction.
He was hard. Very hard, if I was judging correctly from my vantage point.
My best friend was visibly aroused while touching my rope-bound and scantily-clad wife.
I should be fucking furious…but I’m not.
“What did you and Mirabel talk about?” Isabel asks in a meek voice as we pull up to the rental.
“Cross-promotion. She told me a little about how they handle their contracts and freelancers.”
“Oh. Good,” she replies, and then goes quiet again. She’s acting strange.
“Did you like that demonstrator? We can talk to him about coming to Salacious.”
“He was too formal and stuffy,” Drake grumbles from the back seat.
“Never mind then,” I joke.
“I don’t know… I sort of liked him,” Isabel adds with a sweet smile. My wife likes everybody, making her judgment a little hard to trust sometimes. But it makes me love her that much more. She doesn’t have a vicious or cruel bone in her body. Reaching across the console, I squeeze her hand.
Once we get back to the rental, it’s after midnight, and we should probably be exhausted, but the three of us have spent the last year adjusting our schedules to accommodate the late hours of the club. Isabel even hired staff to open her studio and switched to teaching the sunset classes instead of the sunrise ones.
So when we enter the small living space, none of us move toward the bedrooms. Instead, Drake pulls out the bottle of tequila he bought at a local shop today and pops it open with a determined look on his face.
“I’m going to get in my pajamas. Maybe take a bubble bath,” Isabel says, eyeing Drake’s sour mood at the kitchen counter.
“Sounds good, babe,” I say, kissing the back of her hand before she disappears into the bedroom.
Returning to the living room, I watch Drake skeptically as he pours himself a glass.
“Better make that two,” I say, and he does so without a response.
After handing me the glass, he throws back his shot, then lets out a weighted exhale and slams his empty glass on the counter. “Can we talk, please?”
“You okay?” I ask, swirling the golden liquid in the glass.
“No, I’m not okay. I tied up my best friend’s wife in her underwear, and I feel like an asshole for it.”
For the first time tonight, he finally looks me in the eye, and his expression is shrouded in remorse.
“Drake, it’s fine. Relax. It was just a demonstration.”
His brow furrows as he glares at me. “Stop it,” he mutters.
A chuckle erupts out of my chest. “Stop what?”
“Being too fucking nice to me. Treating me like a fucking kid. You should want to wring my neck right now. You want to punch me? Fine. Just do it.”
I’m laughing even harder now. “You’re being fucking stupid. I’m not being too nice to you because I’m not fucking mad at you. What? Do you think I’m really worried you tried to grope my wife on stage with me in the room? Jesus, Drake. I’ve known you my whole goddamn life. If I thought for one second you were ever out to take Isabel from me, do you think I would have kept you around as long as I have?”
“If that were my woman up there, being touched by another man…gawked at by a whole room full of people…I’d lose my shit,” he mutters over another glass of tequila. “I never should have let her get up there like that.”
“You’re beating yourself up over nothing.”
His eyes find mine over the rim of the glass and he watches me for a long time before he slips the drink into his mouth. When he speaks again, he does it a little more quietly. “Everything okay with you guys?”
I flinch before glaring back at him. “Of course. Why would you say that?”
“Because you’re strangely calm about all of this.”
“Because it wasn’t a big deal!” I argue. When he doesn’t relax or say anything for a minute, I grab the bottle from his hand and set it on the counter. “Listen, I’m as surprised as you are, but seeing you with Isabel didn’t make me mad. Maybe it’s because the three of us practically grew up together, so I’ve seen you with her so long that it doesn’t have any kind of effect on me. You can’t get all worked up over one little mix-up and an accidental brush of a tit. It’s not like you fucked her.”