I’m not sure why this is bothering me so much. If I love handing over control, then why is this one time troubling me so much? Maybe because Hunter has no idea just how much it scares me to live with them. It has nothing to do with sharing a space with them. I mean, obviously. We’re on this two-week road trip together, sharing rental houses and the car, and like he said, I stay over at their place all the time. And I’ve lived with them before.
But something about living with them now, even if it’s temporary, is making me anxious. What if I don’t find a place right away? What if I get used to being there? Drinking coffee with Isabel every morning. Staying up late with Hunter every night. Sharing meals and doing laundry together. It’s so fucking domestic, and something about that makes my skin crawl.
I love Hunter and Isabel, but their happy little married life is not for me. Sleeping with the same person every night and waking up with the same person every morning. The monotony of it sounds so draining.
And what about bringing home women? I can’t possibly bring a hookup into their house. I’ve never done it before and it’s clearly different from a vacation rental. That’s their home.
I guess it’s a good thing I have the club.
Fuck, between work and Salacious, I doubt I’d ever be at their house anyway.
And I do hate the idea of cutting this trip short, even after the awkward stage moment last night.
“Fine,” I mutter from the back seat of Hunter’s Durango as we pull out of the gas station.
Isabel turns toward me with excitement. “You’ll do it? You’ll stay?”
A smirk tugs on the corner of my mouth. “Yeah. I’ll stay. But only for a week or two. Until I find a better place.”
“Of course,” she says, a beaming smile spreading across her cheeks.
Our eyes meet, and the excitement in her expression morphs into something else, something more loaded than just eagerness. I’d give my right arm to know what she’s thinking right now, to know how excited she really is, and why.
“You can stay as long as you want,” Hunter says, glancing at me through the rearview mirror, and I quickly avert my eyes from both of their gazes.
“Thanks. You guys are too good to me.”
When I feel Isabel’s hand against my leg, I flinch, something I’ve never done before. And she notices, but she doesn’t move her hand away. “You don’t need to thank us, Drake. You’re family. We would do anything for you.”
I know what she’s saying is true. They would do anything, but that’s the problem. Hunter and Isabel hold me on a short leash…and they don’t even know they do it. It’s like an emotional boundary I can’t cross, never letting me get too far away from them. And that’s my fault—because I’ve indulged them repeatedly over the past ten years.
I’ve been a third wheel in their lives for so long, I don’t know how to be without them, and I know they’ll grow sick of me before long. This little triad has to come to an end eventually. A thought that doesn’t feel good when I think about it, because it’s not about my feelings for Isabel or for Hunter…it’s about them with a capital T.
I care about the two of them more than anyone else in the world.
Rule #7: There’s a kink for everyone.
Hunter
It’s a long drive from Phoenix to Austin. Drake and I take turns driving, and he took over in El Paso. Isabel is sleeping peacefully with her head in my lap in the back seat, while Drake has his music on, which means a lot of time for me to think. And the only place my mind wants to reside anymore is on that demonstration in the club last night.
At first, it was strange how not angry I was at seeing my wife’s legs wrapped around my best friend. But it’s even more alarming that every time I think about it, I get a buzz of excitement, and I have to adjust myself in my pants.
Now, I just have to admit it, at least to myself—thinking about them together in a sexual way turns me on.
I’ve been in the kink business for seven years now. I know that the shit that gets us excited doesn’t have to be something we’re ashamed of—assuming it involves consent, of course. So I’m not going to bother being embarrassed by this new revelation. I’m a human, like anyone else, and I have no more control over my kinks than Garrett, the voyeur, or Emerson, the Dom.
But why haven’t I noticed this one before?
When we started the Salacious dating app, which is still running without a hitch, thanks to our development team, I was in charge of that department. I found the guys who made the technical stuff happen, but it also meant I was the guy responsible for organizing the whole damn thing. I had to explain to a group of code-writing virgins what each of these kinky designations meant and how to set an algorithm that would filter the app subscribers into their proper kinky groups.