A Crafty Ever After [Suncoast Society] Read online

  That’s exactly what he was doing, and she whimpered in reply.

  He tipped her head back onto his left shoulder and wrapped his arms around her, holding her left wrist and trapping that arm against her body, but with her wounded righty resting on top of his, safely out of the way.

  “Flick her clit, Sean.”

  He did, a light, steady motion that made her gasp and whine and try to grind her hips against him, but held immobile against Max’s body, she couldn’t do anything but take it.

  “Our poor baby,” Max evilly cooed loudly enough for Sean to hear. “If we knew you were this horny, we would have taken care of you first. I guess that just means we’ll have to take care of you longer and make it last to make up for you having to wait, hmm?”

  Uh oh.

  I’m fucked.

  Sean shouldered her thighs wider apart and clamped his hands around the tops of them, now completely pinning her in place.

  Now they had her. With Max keeping up a sexy narration, Sean played with her like a toy, teasing, driving her close to the edge just to cool down.

  “Please,” she finally begged. “Please let me come!”

  Max kissed her shoulder. “I don’t know, baby. I’m not sure we’ve made it up to you enough.”

  “You have! Please get me off!”

  “Hmm.” Max kissed his way down the right side of her neck where the neck of the T-shirt gaped and bared her flesh, to her shoulder, about the same place he’d bitten Sean. “I think you know what I want in return. Ask me nicely, and maybe I’ll have him make you come.”

  There was always a price to be paid to the sadist, and she and Sean were always happy to pay it, just like Max was always happy to pay it when he was on the receiving end of one or both of them.

  She tipped her head to the left to give Max more room and better access. “Do it!”

  “You heard the lady, Sean.” That was the only warning she got before Max’s teeth clamped down, hard, the good kind of pain. The kind of pain she craved and loved from either man.

  Mixed with the way Sean was swiping his tongue up and down the length of her throbbing clit, it drop-kicked her over the edge. Her orgasm rolled through her, hard and sharp and even sweeter when mixed with the pain Max was giving her.

  Sean and Max stayed with her, reading her body, both men easing up when she’d crossed over from oh-so-good into too-much-stimulation territory. Max’s bite turned to gentle sucking and kisses while Sean rained kisses along her inner thighs.

  As she recovered, sucking in deep breaths, Sean finally lifted his face from between her legs.

  “Better, baby?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. Now she felt sleepy again, her meds kicking in, the pain meds and sweet endorphins easing the pain in her hand to a dull, nagging throb.

  Max waited for Sean to move before carefully untangling himself from her and kissing her. “Love you, sweetheart.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Sean tasted like her juices when he leaned in to kiss her, and she licked him from chin to lips, his morning stubble scratchy against her tongue, before kissing him. “Love you.”

  He smiled. “Love you, too, sweetie. Going to go back to sleep for a while?”

  “Yeah. I think I can, now. If you want to eat breakfast, go ahead.”

  “Door closed?” Max asked.

  “Yeah. And TV on, please.”

  He turned it onto NatGeo for her, the volume down low, and she snuggled under the sheet and closed her eyes, sleep already dragging her down.

  Chapter Three

  Sean and Max pulled on shorts and carefully let themselves out of the bedroom as quietly as possible. He was going to talk to Max about what he’d meant earlier, except before he could, Essie called Max to confirm what her schedule was tomorrow with Cali’s doctor appointment, and then they got busy cooking breakfast, and then Cali was up and awake again, and the day got away from him.

  They spent the day working in the house and out in the workshop, trying to catch up the latest batch of orders that had come in and figuring out their next production schedule.

  “This shit always looks easy when Cali does it,” Sean muttered low enough she couldn’t hear them from the office, where she’d gone to update the website.

  He smiled. “Isn’t that what they usually say about experts in any field? That they make what they do look effortless?”

  “I don’t think I truly processed exactly how much she does around here until this week. We need to give her a raise.”

  “Like you really think she’d take it?”

  “True. She goes out of her way to put everything and everyone before herself.” Sean sighed. “And that’s one of the things I love so much about her.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I’m sure Marcia will be swearing when she realizes how much Cali’s been doing there, too. Our girl is kind of sneaky like that.”

  “Maybe she’ll give her a raise.”

  Max snorted. “How much is twenty percent of nothing?”

  Sean laughed. “Still nothing.” His smile faded. “Never been so glad we got the vasectomies, either. Can’t imagine trying to deal with all of this and juggle a child, too.”

  “You ain’t kidding,” Max muttered.

  * * * *

  Late that evening, it was well past dark when Max waited until Cali had fallen asleep in bed between him and Sean to ease himself from under the covers and head to the lanai. He didn’t bother putting clothes on and grabbed a beach towel from the guest bathroom on his way out. He hoped Sean wasn’t too far out of it to take the hint and follow him, but he didn’t want to wake him up if he wasn’t. They could always discuss this in the morning on their way to work.

  He, however, wasn’t anywhere close to falling asleep yet, and he didn’t wait to toss and turn and wake Cali up.

  Without turning on the pool lights, Max slipped through the sliders, making sure Baxter didn’t get out behind him. Then he left the towel next to the stairs and eased into the warm water.

  The pool felt perfect tonight, a couple of degrees warmer than the air temp and plenty warm enough to keep him from feeling chilled. He slowly stroked down and back for a few laps before rolling onto his back and floating in the middle of the still water.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to relax and clear his mind for a few minutes. He loved this house, a house made even better by adding Cali to their hearts and lives.

  Yes, and Baxter, too.

  Persnickety little nip-addicted furball.

  He didn’t even look when he heard the sliders open and close a few minutes later. The sound of a towel hitting the concrete, followed by soft ripples against the side of the pool as someone joined him.

  Hands circled his ankles and pushed his legs apart, warm breath soon washing over his sac and cock, hardening him instantly.

  Then Sean pulled him into his arms and Max wrapped himself around his guy. “Sorry it took me a few minutes. She’d rolled over and had her arm around me. I didn’t want to wake her up.”

  “That’s okay.” Sean’s hands settled on Max’s ass, holding him in place, their hard cocks now rubbing against each other in the water.

  “So let’s finish our earlier conversation,” Sean started. “What were you researching this morning?”

  One of the things Max loved about Sean was his ability to flip into whatever mode was needed, sometimes faster than Max could. This was serious Sean, the man who was all business. “Health insurance.”

  “For Cali?”

  “Yeah. You’re going to marry her. And let me rephrase that so my meaning is clear—I am telling you that you are going to marry Cali.”

  Even in the dark, he could see Sean’s blue gaze, piercing and looking almost like midnight in the dim light.

  Although the partially missing eyebrow added a little humor to his expression. “Doesn’t she get a say in that?”

  “Nope. Not anymore. I’m pulling rank. I’m going to order her to marry one of us.”
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br />   “Buuut, I’m pretty sure you just gave me an order to marry her.”

  “I did. She won’t be able to choose, so I’m making the choice now.”

  He knew he needed to let Sean have this conversation at his pace to avoid him trying to argue about it later, so Max waited him out through the next silence.

  “How can you be so sure she’ll even say yes, much less choose me?”

  “We won’t give her a choice to do anything but say yes. She loves us. She’s never going to leave us, and you know as well as I do that’s the truth, not me being an asshole. I’ll give her an ultimatum with two options—she picks, or we pick for her. She won’t be able to pick. She’ll default to letting us choose. That means you marry her.”

  Sean made a motion, waving his fingers in a circle. “Instead of me wasting our time where I could be fucking your brains out, I’mma just gonna let you say it all at once, instead of me playing twenty questions with you, m’kay?”

  “Your insurance is a little cheaper than mine because you’re a year younger than me. You’re going to marry her, both of you will change your last names to add Trendle, and I’ll eventually hyphenate Dennison to mine. And we won’t tell her which one of us is marrying her.”

  “Okay, dude, you’ve lost me. How does she not know which one of us she’s marrying?”

  “We have Loren marry us. All three of us. We all take vows. But your name is on the license, and we hide that from her. When we go to apply for it, we both stand at the counter and make her stand back, away from us. We cover the sheet whenever she has to sign it. Hell, take Ed with us. I mean yeah, eventually she’ll find out she married you, but by then she’ll have realized that no, it doesn’t matter which one of us it is. Which will prove my whole point—it doesn’t matter which one of us she marries.”

  Max spotted the hint of sadness in Sean’s gaze. “Guess I’ll never get to marry you, now, huh?”

  Yeah, this was the only downside to the plan, and another reason Max had never pushed for something like this sooner.

  Max leaned in and kissed him. “In my heart and in my life, you became my husband in everything except name the first night the two of us made love after evicting her from our house.”

  Max kept his tone soft and gentle and knew he didn’t have to clarify who “her” referred to. “That was way back when us getting married wasn’t even a legal option we had the luxury of taking. You can take my name when you marry Cali. She can add both our names. It’s easier to do when you get married. I’ll have Ed file paperwork for me to change my name.”

  Another long, achingly painful silence followed as Sean processed that. “But that still leaves you out.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “If this was me asking you if I could marry her, would you tell me no or feel left out?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you think I’m ever going to leave you?”

  Sean sighed. “No. Of course not.”

  “If I was going to leave you, do you really think a piece of paper could stop me?”

  Another long pause. “No,” he said, but this time it sounded sad.

  Max cupped Sean’s face in his hands. “Here’s the thing—I’m stepping up and taking charge. For good. You and I both know this is way overdue, now that we have Cali. We can still flip back and forth like we always do for playing around. Nothing changes with that.

  “But she almost died because one of us wasn’t focused on the big picture. That’s not a slam against you,” Max quickly added. “That’s just a statement of fact, and it’s as much about me as it is about you. We both took things for granted, we both dropped the ball, and that ends now.”

  He kissed Sean deeply, the way he knew his guy liked. “Now, you can either safeword and fight me on this and we spend the rest of the night hashing this out and still end up in the same place, or you can skip the wasting time part, admit I’m right, and submit to me and move straight to fucking my ass. Pick.”

  Sean’s eyes dropped closed even as his grip on Max’s ass tightened. “I submit.”

  Max wrapped his arms around Sean again and held him tightly. “That’s my good boy,” he whispered. “Doesn’t that feel good, to finally be able to admit what you really needed?”

  He practically melted in Max’s arms, all tension draining from his body. “Yes, Sir.”

  He tenderly nuzzled Sean’s cheek. “I never wanted to push the issue before, because everything was running so smoothly. But this is how it needs to be from now on.”

  Sean nodded. “Yeah.”

  “All the proof I need that you love me, trust me, and are my husband for life is for you to do what I tell you to and marry Cali and take my name.”

  “That’s if she’ll go along with it.”

  “Oh, she’ll go along with it. She won’t have a choice. And she’ll know it, too.”

  * * * *

  Yes, Sean trusted Max with his life, and with Cali’s. And Max was absolutely right that if one of them had been the de facto “top dog” in their triad, this mess never would have happened in the first place. Equal partners was fine when it was only the two of them, and in the early days with Cali before they knew for certain she was all-in for good. Long-term, however, there had to be a leader.

  Max was that leader, and always had been.

  Sure, Sean could fall back on false pride and bravado and try to challenge Max for that position, but who the fuck would he be fooling except himself? He was happiest in those times he knew Max was there, having his back, taking care of him, watching out for him.

  That was the only thing that had gotten Sean through the darkest days of Lydia, before they’d shed her like the dead, reptilian skin she was, and in the emotionally bloody aftermath that followed. When they’d started over, just the two of them, it’d been Max who Sean always turned to for help through his pain.

  Who understood his pain, because he’d been there right by his side when they’d suffered through it all.

  It’d always been Max who stood there, his rock, his lighthouse, never bending in the face of the insane forces of Sean’s emotional storms.

  Always Max.

  A piece of paper was just that.

  But that piece of paper would allow them to take better care of Cali—their wife—for the rest of their lives.

  Max was absolutely right. It didn’t make Max any less Sean’s husband for not having his name on the marriage certificate.

  “So when do we tell her this?” Sean asked.

  “Tomorrow after work. I don’t want to drop this on her in the morning when she’s not fully awake yet. Plus she’s got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll be feeling pretty damn vulnerable and guilty later in the day, anyway.”

  “What? Why?”

  “That goddamned co-pay. If it was on our policy, it’d be, what, twenty-five dollars? It’s eight times as much for her co-pay tomorrow because he’s an out-of-network specialist. I already looked, and her surgeon is in our network. If she was on your plan, a couple of visits to him would nearly pay for itself in savings over what it costs for her damn monthly premium. That’s before we start adding up all the charges we’re out-of-pocket from this whole thing because her plan is shitty. If nothing else, I hit her in the wallet. She’s practical. She can’t argue there’s not a monetary reason to agree to this.”

  “You’re not going to make me call you Sir all the time now, are you?”

  Except his cock twitched against Max’s body at the thought of doing just that, and he knew damn well Max had felt it.

  They were right—it was a lie detector.

  Max smirked. “No, buddy. I’m not going to do that to you.” He nibbled on Sean’s ear. “Unless you want me to.”

  Sean’s cock twitched again. “Dammit,” he muttered.

  Max laughed, a sexy, throaty chuckle. “Go grab the lube and meet me at the stairs, and I’ll let you fuck my ass and seal the deal.”

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nbsp; Sean kissed him. “Deal.”

  He released Max and raced for the pool stairs. Yes, he should have known better and grabbed the lube on his way out there, but he didn’t think of it at the time.

  He’d been more interested in sating his curiosity, which had been humming in the background all day long while knowing Max wouldn’t have broken his silence until after Cali was safely asleep anyway.

  Moments later, he had Max bent over in front of him and was lining his cock up with Max’s freshly lubed ass.

  Max kept his arms braced against the steps and thrust back, impaling himself on Sean’s cock.

  Sean grabbed Max’s hips. “That’s what I’m talking about, man. This is going to be hard and fast and dirty, so hang on.” With that warning, he plowed Max, pounding his cock into him, all while thinking about happily kneeling at Max’s feet and awaiting his next order.

  Yeah.

  It spoke to his soul, having Max in charge. Wouldn’t have worked if he didn’t trust him and love him like he did.

  He finished with several hard, jarring thrusts, remaining buried deep inside Max’s ass as he filled him with his cum, marked him once again, claimed his ownership in his own way.

  Then he pulled Max up along his body, one hand around Max’s throat and the other fisting his cock. “Your turn, Sir.” He licked Max’s cheek as his hand stroked Max’s cock.

  Then he pressed his lips to Max’s ear. “It is so fucking hot knowing I’m the only guy you’ve ever let breed that gorgeous ass of yours, Sir.”

  When Max moaned, Sean knew he had him in the zone.

  He continued pumping Max’s cock. “And it makes me even hotter, Sir, knowing I’m the only guy who ever got to feel this sweet cock of yours fucking them.”

  He squeezed same-said sweet cock, slowing his strokes as Max tried to rock in time with his motions. “I can’t wait until our girl’s all healed up so we can put her right between us and reclaim her all over again. Been too long since we’ve both fucked her pussy at the same time. So damned sexy feeling that cock of yours sliding back and forth along mine while she’s begging us to make her come—”