Empty-Handed Heart Read online

  They didn’t torture her. And after making her come twice, they once again cuddled in bed.

  “We need to get showers and head downstairs to breakfast,” Niall said. “I have to teach, and I want ye both in class. I need a demo bottom, anyway.”

  “Uh oh,” Aden said, laughing. “Guess that means I’m on deck.”

  Niall sat up, leaned over her, and kissed him. “It’s no fun without ye. I’m only at my best with ye.”

  Aden reached up and ruffled Niall’s hair. “Guess we’ll be in your class, then, huh?” He yawned. “We’ll shower here. You go grab your shower in your room, pack, and bring your stuff down here. And towels. We’re going to need them.”

  “Right.”

  When Niall left, Aden sat up and kissed her hand. “We really good?”

  “Holy fucking shitballs, yeah!” She sat up and kissed him. “Just keep talking to me. You guys get a freebie for the elevator. Yeah, he did tell me. At the time, being in the dark, and so close to a bad attack, I was happy to do what he told me to. I could have said something, but I didn’t want to.”

  She poked his shoulder. “The hookup later, though, that’s the other freebie. No sneaking. You need alone time with each other, or I want alone time with one of you, just say so.”

  He nodded, leaning in for another kiss. “Deal. I love you so fucking much, you have no idea.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, well, like you said, let’s see how you feel after he’s waking you up like that every morning.”

  * * * *

  The elevator situation only worsened throughout the day as more people, many who lived locally but who’d bought day passes, flooded into the hotel for the convention.

  Fortunately, the service elevator, while cosmetically sketchy and noisy as fuck, chugged reliably along and they didn’t get stuck in it.

  But by Sunday morning, they’d all had enough and decided to head home a day early. When they checked out, Aden asked to speak to a manager. It took a few minutes of waiting, but a man finally emerged from the back, looking harried and unhappy.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yeah. My girlfriend has asthma. Severe asthma. And she has panic attacks and claustrophobia. Twice we got stuck in the elevators. I’m going to need you to do something for me.”

  “We can discount one of the nights for you. You weren’t the only ones who got stuck.”

  Etsu involuntarily took a step back at the rage that flashed across Niall’s face.

  He stayed Aden’s next words with a touch on his shoulder and leaned in, his voice dropping. “My good man, come with me, please.” He pointed to the empty hotel bar on the other side of the lobby. It wasn’t open that time of morning.

  The guy apparently knew better than to argue and followed.

  Etsu trailed along behind Aden.

  Niall smiled, but it was a crocodile, not a kitten. “On two different occasions, when we were stuck in your elevators, we picked up the emergency phone and found it dead, which wouldn’t have been a problem except that we had an emergency, and our cell phones didn’t have a signal. The first time after it happened, I walked to the front desk and talked to one of yer clerks who acted appropriately horrified and said it would be passed along to the elevator engineers, who were supposedly en route.”

  “Well, the—”

  “I’m not finished. It happened again the second time we were stuck in the elevator. Now, considerin’ the elevators have apparently been acting odd all weekend, the appropriate time to have a service team here would have been Thursday night, after we were stuck and I reported it to ye. Oh, and yer desk clerk didn’t bother to offer me any compensation whatsoever for our trouble, not even paying for dinner, or a bar tab—nothing.”

  “But our—”

  “Still not finished. Their room was on the ninth floor, mine on the tenth. With her asthma, she is not capable of walkin’ that many flights of stairs, and especially not on the heels of almost dying in your bloody elevators!”

  “Sir—”

  “Still not finished! Now, either ye comp both of our rooms for the entire weekend, or not only will I make sure to call the Tampa TV stations as soon as I get home and tell them about the atrocious safety hazard this place is, I’ll also tell them about yer horrible mold problem.”

  “Mold problem?”

  Niall’s smile widened. Then he pointed at the man. Once the man was focused on the end of Niall’s finger, he pointed straight up, the man’s gaze following.

  Etsu and Aden both looked, too.

  Etsu gasped.

  So did the manager.

  The skinny AC vent over the bar area, almost directly overhead, was about two feet long. Condensation dripped from one end of it, hitting the carpet, but it was the large black spots of mold all over it that had Etsu’s eyes widened.

  “Mold problem,” Niall repeated. “Not just there, but in the exhaust vents in the rooms’ bathrooms, as well. They’re disgustin’. And if ye look up in several of the conference rooms on the second floor, the vents are even worse than the one overhead currently dripping its plague on unsuspectin’ patrons. In addition to the TV stations, I’ll make sure to post all the pictures we’ve taken of all these issues on the scathin’ Yelp review I’ll draft, as well.”

  Aden jumped in. “And considering how shitty your elevators are, and how many floors this hotel has, you should have stairwell rescue chairs in the upper levels.”

  The manager was still looking overhead, at other vents in the bar area that, yes, were also gross. “What?”

  “Rescue chairs,” Aden said. “Look them up on Google. When you have people on upper floors who use wheelchairs or have other mobility issues, they need to get down in case of emergency. That’s a major safety issue there.”

  “I…I—”

  “Would ye like to rethink your answer, then?” Niall asked. “Because, otherwise, my friends and I have a rather busy afternoon ahead of us to get these posts drafted. Bloody disgusting AC system, death trap elevators, and completely unprepared to handle evacuatin’ guests with mobility issues. That’s three strikes right there. Or should I list more problems we found?”

  The man swallowed hard and looked at Niall. “Let’s go back to the desk and I’ll comp both your rooms for your entire stay.”

  Niall’s smile turned from croc to kitten. “That’s awfully kind of ye. Thank ye very much.”

  * * * *

  It wasn’t until Niall was heading south on Skyway behind Aden’s car that he was really able to accept yes, this was happening.

  Actually happening.

  Not just a dream, but a dream come true.

  He used his phone’s speaker mode to call his father.

  “How’d your weekend go, son?”

  “Um…well, Da, it was…interestin’.” He felt like he couldn’t stop grinning.

  “Interesting?”

  “Yes. I…ran into Aden.”

  His tone sounded guarded. Aden had told him he’d told Ygor about Etsu. “And?”

  “I’m movin’ in with him.”

  Silence.

  “Da?”

  “What about Etsu?”

  His smile widened. “She’s probably movin’ in with us, too.”

  “What?”

  He gave him a brief and highly condensed version of the events. By the time he finished, his father chuckled.

  “Well, I hope it works out for the three of you. I haven’t met her yet, but she sounds like a pistol, if she can handle both of you.”

  “That’s what I’m hopin’, Da.”

  When he pulled into Aden’s driveway it took him a moment to process he was there.

  Really there.

  Home.

  He got out, unable to hold back his own tears when he realized Aden was also crying.

  They stood there in the yard hugging for a long, quiet moment before pulling Etsu in with them, their arms around her and each other.

  “Welcome home, asshole,” Aden muttered. “Too
k you long enough to come back.”

  Etsu laughed.

  Niall smiled and kissed him. “Good to finally be home again, gobshite.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next week and a half passed in a blur.

  Usually a lube-scented, moaning blur, if at least two of them were home. If all three of them were home, they seemed unable to stay clothed for more than a few seconds.

  Not that Etsu was complaining.

  She was playing a game of cat and mouse with her parents now. As soon as she’d turned her phone back on Monday morning after returning from the convention, it’d blown up with texts and voice mails from her parents, to the point that her voice mail was full.

  All for pointless, stupid things, of course. No emergencies.

  Mostly her mother, demanding she call them and tell them where she was, and even going so far as to threaten to file a police report if she didn’t call them back soon.

  So that afternoon, she’d run home at lunch time to grab more work clothes. While there, she called her mom and told her that she was done with their bullshit, and when they were ready to apologize and treat her like an adult, they could call her, but not before. Otherwise, she was going to block all their numbers if they didn’t stop it.

  The calls stopped.

  Now Etsu was waiting to see what their next step would be. She’d texted Molly she’d be moving out by the end of the lease, but sent her an online payment for her share of the monthly bills and warned her she wouldn’t be staying there.

  She didn’t want to be away from the men.

  Her men.

  They’d had a long talk, the three of them, that Sunday, after the convention, backing up a little so they didn’t hit any speed bumps. For now, they were easing up on the D/s dynamic between her and the men, and the men between each other, until she got to know Niall better. That was the men’s decision, not hers.

  She understood they were right. The only way this would last for life was if all three of them were on the same page, and Niall and Aden had eight years of time spent together already.

  She loved Aden for wanting to back up a few steps, and respected Niall for insisting he build a relationship with her before they go any further despite the messy explosion that brought them all together in the first place. Maybe another woman would have hated them and resented this whole situation.

  They still both fucked her brains out, and she was loving every second of that. Nearly as much as she loved watching the two of them together.

  Sometimes Aden called Niall Sir, but almost like he slipped when he did it. For the most part, she could tell Aden was holding back with Niall in some ways, as if caught in a limbo between being her Sir and being Niall’s boy.

  From the longing in Niall’s gaze, she could tell he missed it as much as Aden seemed to, but knew they had to work that out between them.

  Today was Thursday, over a week since they’d come home from the convention, and Etsu was looking forward to having lunch with Niall that afternoon.

  No lie.

  Were they doing everything backward in this romance?

  Sure they were.

  She didn’t care.

  She wasn’t just any woman, and these two men weren’t just any two men.

  Not to mention she already felt herself slipping into far more than just liking the guy when it came to Niall. He had a calm, peaceful demeanor about him, hiding the sadist who lurked right below the surface. The sweet, funny guy who could make people laugh and charm the pants off of them could also make her scream in agony and ecstasy—even at the same time.

  She wanted more.

  She wanted it all.

  She wanted both of them.

  Would her family understand?

  Nope.

  She no longer cared about that, either. This was her life, and she’d seen Aden smile more in the past week and a half than she could ever remember in the time she’d known him.

  Niall kept her smiling, too. When he wasn’t helping Aden blow the top of her head off with pleasure.

  Only bummer was that ever since she’d awakened that morning she’d felt…off. Like her sinuses were messed up, or something was trying to trigger her seasonal allergies. Not bad enough for her to resort to her emergency inhaler, but she hoped it didn’t put a damper on their play tonight. She was supposed to cook them dinner in “pet” mode and then they’d agreed to play with her. Both of them.

  She’d been looking forward to it.

  Really looking forward to it.

  After arriving at work, she got settled in at the front desk and hoped today was relatively uneventful. Ken, the head of security, stopped by to chat with her when he arrived. “We’re supposed to have a crew of AC techs coming in today to look at Avery-Ling Assets’ system up on ten. You can give them maintenance badges and send them through.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You feeling all right?”

  The older man always found time to chat with her. When she’d first started working there and he’d learned she had asthma, he’d passed the word among his guys to not to wear cologne or aftershave. His daughter had asthma, so he was no stranger to the condition.

  “I think seasonal allergies trying to play hell with me, that’s all.”

  “Ah. Yeah, my car was covered with yellow crap this morning. I think pine pollen.”

  “Oh, gawd. Tree spooge.”

  He laughed. “Maybe it’ll rain later and clear it out.”

  She glanced out the front windows. “Maybe.”

  This morning, she was doing double duty, passing through calls for the real estate management company whose offices occupied the ground floor because their main receptionist had called in sick. While they paid Etsu’s salary, just like they also paid the security and building maintenance team, and this was one of her stated duties when they’d hired her, it didn’t happen very often.

  She hated it, because it was stressful and she didn’t want to screw up and drop or miss calls. Usually she only had to deal with manning the front desk, checking in visitors, signing for packages, and taking overflow calls for the real estate management company if their receptionist was on the phone with someone else.

  Above the building’s second floor, the elevators only worked if you had a badge, keyed to whether or not you were an employee or a visitor. Visitor badges—which were actually stickers—only worked for the floor they were assigned to. The only people who didn’t need badges were the ones going to the law offices on the second floor, either via stairs in the atrium or the elevator.

  “Oh, I’m going out to lunch with a friend this afternoon,” she said. “He’s picking me up. Can you get someone to cover for me?” He knew Aden, but she wasn’t yet sure how to explain the wonderful complication that was Niall.

  “Sure, no problem. If someone’s not down here, page me on the radio.”

  “Thanks!” Their building had a mix of clients that ranged from corporate attorneys, to accounting and brokerage firms, and quite a few other businesses that could afford the building’s rent.

  It wasn’t the world’s most exciting job, but the basic health care plan paid for most of her meds and the job allowed her to work inside, in air-conditioning, at a job that wasn’t physically taxing. It beat retail, where previous jobs had meant missing work due to getting sick or having asthma attacks…or getting sick and it triggering an asthma attack, all with worse or non-existent health care plans.

  She was in the middle of answering a phone call when the AC techs showed up. One of the guys smelled like he’d bathed in body spray, and she did her best to get them badged and away from her desk as quickly as possible.

  Unfortunately, smelly guy insisted on lingering once she’d finished her call, smiling at her, and not only was his body spray choking her, his leer made her uncomfortable. “So what do you do for lunch?”

  “You need to please go,” she finally said, backing to the other side of her desk area.

  He frowned. “What’
s wrong with you?”

  “I have allergies and asthma, and whatever you’re wearing is choking me. Besides that, I have a boyfriend. Please, just go.”

  “Dave!” one of the guys called out to him.

  He finally turned to follow. She was pretty sure she heard him mutter, “Bitch,” under his breath.

  Once they were finally out of the lobby, she grabbed the radio and called Ken to let him know what happened. Her heart hammered in her chest, nearly making her feel sick.

  “I’ll go have a talk with them,” he said. “Sorry about that, Etsu.”

  “Thanks.”

  It took the better part of five minutes for the smell to clear from the lobby, and she took a pull from her inhaler before the tightness in her chest got too bad.

  Shit.

  If she wasn’t feeling good, she knew the men would absolutely nix any possibility of play that night.

  Well, Aden would, and he’d explain to Niall why they had to. She knew Niall would agree with him.

  Dammit.

  She thought about taking a Xanax and decided against it. Depending on how the day went, she might need to take more asthma meds, and those would make her sleepy enough.

  Her breathing had mostly evened out and she’d forgotten the encounter a couple of hours later as she focused on answering the phones. It was close to her lunch time and she knew Niall would be arriving at any moment. The real estate management’s phones would get switched to automatic voice mail while she was gone.

  She smelled the guy before he spoke, startling her. She used a wireless headset for answering calls, so it wasn’t uncommon for people to not realize she was on the phone.

  She turned and rolled her chair back, to the far side, holding a finger up as she tried to get the person on the phone to stop talking long enough she could tell them she was transferring their call to the proper agent’s extension.

  “I... Yes, just a moment please, and I’ll connect you.” She punched the call through and stood, now focusing her attention on him, finally letting the cough break through that had bubbled up.

  “Look, sorry if I scared you earlier. Just wanted to ask you to lunch.”