Any World That I'm Welcome To [Suncoast Society] (Siren Publishing Sensations) Read online

  Except…he did.

  Dex bit down hard on Neil’s left shoulder, holding it until Neil finally gasped with pain. Then Dex gently sucked, licking the spot.

  He was a biter.

  Neil loved it.

  He loved the possessive way Dex took charge when that was their dynamic, marking him in little ways.

  Dex’s hand finally slid down to Neil’s cock and balls, cupping around them but not stroking. That frustrated Neil—literally—and he tried to hump himself back and forth between Dex’s cock and hand.

  “Someone wants to nut,” Dex teased. “What are you willing to do to earn it?”

  Neil had reached the point where speaking in tongues was looking like a viable linguistic option. “Anything Sir wants.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “That’s a dangerous blanket statement.” Dex rolled Neil’s balls in his hand, teasing but not stroking.

  “Please!”

  Another bite to his shoulder, closer to his neck. “There better be rope in that toybag.”

  Neil swallowed hard. “Yes, Sir.”

  “I think I’m in a mood to hog-tie you and cane your ass.”

  “Yes, Sir.” He felt the first hints of subspace tugging at him. He’d only hit it twice before with previous partners when he’d let them top him…and Dex seemed to have a way of dropping him into it hard and fast when Neil was on the bottom.

  Then Dex’s hand started jerking Neil’s cock and he couldn’t have held back even if ordered to. As his cum coated Dex’s hand, Dex started fucking him, filling the condom before finally falling still.

  He felt Dex bring his hand up, and Neil had already opened his mouth, anticipating Dex’s fingers.

  Instead, when Neil opened his eyes and looked, he spotted Dex licking his hand clean.

  In that exact moment, if Dex had told Neil he wanted their current dynamic to be their permanent one, Neil would have agreed.

  The playful twinkle in Dex’s eyes made Neil’s cock twitch already.

  Already.

  “Let’s clean up and get the rope,” Dex said.

  Neil smiled. “Yes, Sir.”

  * * * *

  They fucked each other into exhaustion and slept late the next morning. After calling the house to check in, they headed out to breakfast. From there to the mall.

  Dex didn’t even care much about price shopping first, knowing Neil would be as practical as he was.

  As they looked over rings in the case, it was Neil who spotted it first. His hand tightly squeezed Dex’s. “There.”

  Gold, with lines that almost resembled sheet music trailing around it, and what looked like little doves.

  Dex felt the prickle of tears in his eyes. “Her birds and her music. It’s perfect.”

  And it wasn’t the most expensive ring, either. Fortunately, they had them in both their sizes.

  He knew Neil didn’t understand why he wanted them boxed so they could take them, instead of putting them on there.

  But he instructed Neil to take them back to the resort.

  After changing into shorts, Dex pocketed the ring box and led Neil down to the sand, fingers twined and no fucks given if anyone had a problem with two guys.

  Then he had him sit next to him in the sand, above the high-water line.

  He took the ring box out and set it in his lap before taking Neil’s left hand and slipping the ring there on to his right hand.

  Without a word, he held his left hand out to Neil. Dex felt Neil’s hands tremble as he moved the wedding band to Dex’s right ring finger.

  Still holding hands, Dex stared into his eyes. “I, Dexter Norman Lee, do take thee, Neil Hamlin Abbott, as my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, cherish…and obey, for as long as we both shall live.”

  He spotted the tears in Neil’s eyes and hoped he lasted until they got the rings on each other, or Dex would be bawling right with him.

  “I, Neil Hamlin Abbott, do take thee, Dexter Norman Lee, as my lawfully wedded husband.” He sniffled, but smiled. “For all those things, especially the love, honor, cherish, and obey part, but please put that ring on me right now before I start crying like a little bitch. You can torture me in front of our friends for fun.”

  Dex opened the ring box and took out Neil’s ring, sliding it onto his finger. “With this ring, I thee wed. Again.”

  Neil almost fumbled Dex’s ring, and he had to cup his hands under Neil’s while Neil got a better grip on it before he slid it onto Dex’s hand. “With this ring, I thee wed.” He smiled. “Again. And always.”

  Dex cupped a hand around the back of Neil’s neck and brushed a kiss across his lips. “I love you, husband.”

  Neil blinked away tears. “Love you, too, husband.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Neil didn’t know what time it was, but it was still dark out, and something had awakened him.

  It wasn’t Dex, because he lay soundly asleep, spooned along Neil’s back, one arm draped around his waist, where he’d ended up once they’d worn each other out in bed earlier.

  Over nine months married, and it already felt like they’d spent a lifetime together in the good ways. Dex had forty-eight off and they’d worn each other out in bed earlier after he’d returned home.

  He’d closed his eyes, sleep already pulling at him again when he heard the knock on the bedroom door. “Neil?”

  Karyn.

  He dove out of the bed, barely remembering to pull on a robe. Behind him, Dex stirred. “What?”

  With his pulse pounding and dread filling him, Neil cracked the door open. “What’s wrong?”

  Although in his heart, he was convinced this was it. The notification he’d dreaded, that Tamsin had passed away in her sleep.

  Except…

  Karyn wore a strange look. “You need to come see. Both of you.” She didn’t wait, turning and rushing back toward the living room at a jog.

  He followed her down the hall, leaving the door standing open behind him.

  The room was bright because she’d turned on the overhead ceiling fan lights, instead of just the TV, like she usually had for light at night. But when he rounded the doorway and stepped inside the living room, his breath whooshed from him.

  Tamsin turned her head and stared right at him.

  Into his eyes.

  “Dex! Get in here! Now!”

  Tamsin flinched at his scream.

  He nearly tripped over himself to get to her side and put down the right-side bedrail, Tamsin’s gaze following him the entire time. He sat on the edge of the bed and grabbed her right hand, stroking it. He realized she wasn’t wearing her hand splints, both of them lying on the sheet, on Tamsin’s legs.

  “I swear she spoke to me,” Karyn said. “I don’t honestly know how long she’s been awake. I’ve had The Big Bang Theory DVDs playing tonight, because she always seems more responsive when I do. Especially since you told me Nate stopped by and did a treatment on her earlier today. She’s always more active after those. About fifteen minutes ago, I realized she was staring at me. Watching me.

  “When I walked over to her, she followed me with her eyes and moved her head, which she’s never done before. Not like that. I raised the head of the bed and took the hand splints off of her and leaned in to talk to her, to hold her hands and see if I could get her to follow directions and squeeze them, or if this was maybe some new reflexive behavior we hadn’t seen before. Then she looked at me and actually frowned. Even though I could barely hear her, she asked me, ‘Who are you?’”

  Dex ran into the living room and nearly plowed into poor Karyn. “What? What is it? Is she okay?”

  Neil didn’t look away from Tamsin, afraid she might close her eyes again. “Look.”

  Neil didn’t want to get his hopes up just to be crushed once again, but yeah, Tamsin seemed…there.

  When Dex ran in, Tamsin’s gaz
e had shifted once more, following Dex not just with her eyes but with her head, too, as he rushed around the other side of the bed to put that guard rail down and take her left hand in his.

  Something she normally didn’t do.

  Watching and moving.

  Paying attention.

  Focusing.

  Responding.

  “Hey,” Dex softly said, holding her hand against his cheek. “There’s our beautiful girl.”

  She…scowled.

  That was definitely something they hadn’t seen her do before.

  “Are you seeing that?” Neil asked. “Tell me you saw that.”

  “Yeah,” Dex said, sounding choked up. “Karyn, can you please go grab one of our phones? They’re on the bedside table. I want to film this.”

  “Sure.” She left the living room.

  “Baby, look at you looking at us,” Neil said. “Squeeze my hand.”

  Her gaze shifted back to him, the scowl still on her face.

  She squeezed. Weak, but a definite movement.

  “That’s it! That’s our good girl!”

  Karyn rushed in and handed the phone to Neil, since he was closer. It was Dex’s phone, but Neil punched in the security code and got the video camera running before handing it back to Karyn to film everything.

  Neil raised his voice a little. “Tamsin, honey, squeeze my hand again.” He held it up so Karyn could clearly film it.

  Tamsin did.

  Now he and Dex were both crying. They almost couldn’t hear Tamsin when she opened her mouth and spoke again.

  “Who…is…she?”

  Thank god Dex could still talk, because Neil was crying too damn hard. “She works for us, babe. She’s your head night nurse.”

  The return of the scowl was something even Neil could interpret. Thankfully, so could Dex. “There was a bad car wreck,” Dex choked out. “A drunk hit us head-on. You were driving. We were both hurt, but you sustained a severe head injury.”

  Tamsin’s focus turned to Karyn, who waved from behind the cell phone. “Hi, Tamsin. I’m Karyn.”

  Then Tamsin zeroed in on Neil again. “Home?” Her voice sounded weak, barely above a whisper, but to him it was the best sound in the whole world.

  He nodded. “We’re home, baby. We brought you home. You were in the hospital for almost two months, then at a rehab facility for a while until we could get the pool bath remodeled and get everything arranged so we could bring you home.”

  She tried to lick her lips. “Thirsty.”

  “I’ll get a swab,” Karyn said. “We shouldn’t let her drink right now. Not until…later.” She handed the phone to Dex so he could film while she went to get one.

  Neil knew what Karyn didn’t want to say.

  Not until Tamsin had truly been awake for awhile and wasn’t at risk of slipping away again. After she’d been evaluated by a therapist, and tested to make sure she could swallow.

  Tamsin stared up at them, her green eyes filled with questions for the first time since before the wreck. “How…long?”

  The men exchanged a long glance, Neil finally taking point when he realized Dex was now too overcome to talk. “Just a little over a year, sweetheart.”

  * * * *

  This had to be more of the same crazy, wacked-out dream Tamsin had been stuck in lately. A dream where she couldn’t move like she wanted to, and it felt like she was mired in a series of TV shows. Every time she tried to talk to Neil or Dex, she couldn’t. Strange people hovering over her. A series of friends coming by to talk to her, but she couldn’t respond. Mevi and Laurel coming by to play guitar for her. Nate an especially frequent visitor, maybe even giving her acupuncture treatments or something. It was all…mixed up in her head.

  An accident?

  The woman returned and handed Dex a cup and a stick with a small pink sponge attached to it. Dex passed the phone to Neil. There was something weird about Dex’s hands, but she couldn’t figure out what. She watched as Dex brought the sponge up to her mouth, dabbing her lips and letting her suck on it.

  It made her thirstier, a sharp, piercing ache in her mouth.

  Like it’d been months since she’d eaten or drank anything.

  Tamsin tried to lift her head to get closer to the cup and it felt like a one-ton lead weight holding her down. Instead, she opened her mouth, waiting.

  Dex wet the sponge again and she greedily sucked on it.

  “How’s her hydration?” Neil asked.

  The woman walked over to a clipboard. “She’s not due again for two hours, but we can give her water now. I’ll go get it.” She disappeared from Tamsin’s line of sight.

  “You’ve got a feeding tube,” Neil said. “Now that you’re awake, the therapists can re-evaluate you and start feeding therapy before we have it pulled.”

  Feeding tube?

  She tried to move her feet and couldn’t, which brought a wave of panic.

  Am I paralyzed?

  Unable to make her brain think of the right words, she finally gave up and said, “Feet.”

  Dex looked down, then back. “They’re compression boots to help prevent blood clots. We put them on you at night, or when you’re in bed a lot during the day.”

  “I’ll get them.” Neil handed Dex the phone, meaning he didn’t have a free hand to give her another spongeful of water. But a moment later, she felt Neil tugging on her feet and she wanted to cry with relief that she did feel him doing that.

  Neil gently patted her feet. “Better, sweetie?”

  She tried to flex her toes and while she thought she was making them wiggle all over the place, it looked like they were barely moving.

  “Your muscles have atrophied a little,” Dex said. “We’ve been doing physical therapy with you every day, and the therapist comes in twice a week, but you’ll have to regain your strength.”

  The woman—Karyn, she reminded herself—returned with a large syringe full of clear liquid. “This is water, Tamsin,” she said. Then she pulled back the sheet, and the nightgown Tamsin wore, and it revealed a tube.

  Tamsin tried to reach down, to touch it, but Neil swooped in and caught her hands. There was something weird about Neil’s hands, too… “No, baby. You can’t do that right now. Leave it alone. Do not touch it.”

  “What…happened…to…me?”

  Accident? An accident did…this?

  “Tam, baby, we were in a really bad car accident.” Dex’s tone sounded patient. “A head-on collision. It wasn’t your fault. A drunk hit us head-on.”

  He pulled the hem of his robe up, showing her his left thigh, where a long, ugly scar that hadn’t been there before curled up his leg to his hip. “That’s not the only one I have. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I was out of work for a couple of months.”

  This was…too much. Sensory overload. Her gaze drifted toward the TV, where she didn’t recognize this episode of The Big Bang Theory, but she could practically recite Sheldon’s monologue about string theory verbatim as he said it. She let it draw her focus. Maybe that illusory world was preferable to this one.

  Right now, any world except this one, where she didn’t have to face the possibility that this was reality, was welcomed.

  “No,” Neil said. “Baby, come back. Look at us. Focus on us.”

  * * * *

  Dex realized he and Neil were, once again, spookily on the same wavelength. Dex was terrified if they lost her focus now she might drift away again. Then no telling how long it’d be before they got her back. There had been little times here and there lately, maybe a couple of times a week, where she seemed to respond. Actions that they instinctively sensed were more than mere wishful thinking on their part, but nothing they could get Tamsin to repeat enough with any reliability to label a true response.

  Never anything like this.

  Never verbalizations like this.

  Which was why they’d never got their hopes up before now.

  Right now, Dex didn’t want to leave her side. All he
wanted to do was talk to her, make her keep focusing on them.

  “Neil, turn the TV off.”

  “On it.” He grabbed the remote and silenced Sheldon mid-rant.

  She swiveled her gaze back to Neil. “Was…watching…that.”

  Neil broke out into a big grin. “Yeah? Well, you can watch our ugly mugs for a little while, baby.”

  The fingers of her right hand flexed, slowly, and Dex realized she was trying to reach for Neil’s left hand.

  “Neil,” he said, pointing.

  Neil held his hand close, letting her stroke the back of his left hand. Her fingers trailed down his flesh, over his fingers.

  Settling on his ring.

  “What’s…this?”

  He couldn’t ask Karyn to leave the room right now, because she was still in the middle of giving Tamsin water. Frankly, he didn’t want Karyn out of the room right now. He wanted a third-party witness, despite the filming, to talk to the therapists and doctors and corroborate that Tamsin had woken up. That they weren’t making this up, and that they really were talking to her.

  Wasn’t like Karyn was some blushing wallflower.

  He also wasn’t sure how much information they should give Tamsin right now for fear of overwhelming her.

  Dex answered for him, taking it out of his hands.

  “They’re our wedding rings.” He reached in, laying his left hand next to Neil’s, so she could see the matching bands. “We needed to protect you. Neil had custody of you, and we were afraid if something happened to him, we needed a way to make sure I could care for you.”

  Dex leaned in and kissed Tamsin’s forehead. “Frankly, I was kind of hoping promising to let you watch him do me every night might make you wake up faster.”

  Karyn snorted out loud. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Dex wore a smile. “No need to apologize. I’ll be happy to admit it to anyone if it keeps our girl wide awake and with us. And, see? Matchies.” He picked up Tamsin’s left hand and held it next to his and Neil’s right hands. “We got rings for me and him, and I’d got him one that matched ours. Technically we can’t all be married together, but since legally it’s only him and me, we’re not breaking the law.”