Initiative Read online

  It was like Fate had given them both a second chance, one he damn sure wouldn’t let slip through his fingers again.

  Not when she was so beautifully close.

  She smiled when she saw them and rounded the pool, heading their way. She wore a simple black one-piece suit with a purple sarong tied across her hips.

  He hoped he could keep his cock under control until he was seated again so she didn’t spot the pup tent in his swim trunks.

  They’d pulled a chair over for her already, and Darryl found out what she wanted to drink and went to get it for her from the bar. She looked good, even better than she had earlier.

  “Oh,” Marcy said. “That’s an interesting bracelet.”

  Grant silently thanked his friend’s wife as he watched while Susie nearly imperceptibly flinched.

  But he spotted her reaction. He’d learned years ago to what great lengths his friend would go to try to keep her emotions under wraps. Her tells remained the same, it was interesting to see.

  “My husband gave it to me,” she finally said. “It’s very sentimental to me.”

  Corey unknowingly added to the fun. “Kind of looks like that one Darryl wears.”

  Grant had his gaze focused on Susie’s face when she turned, surprise registering on her features as her eyes found his.

  He didn’t blink. “It does look a lot like the one I gave Darryl,” he said, narrowing his gaze and intentionally dropping down into what Darryl liked to call his Dom tone. “Isn’t that a funny coincidence?”

  He felt himself harden as he watched her throat work when she nervously swallowed.

  Game.

  On.

  * * * *

  Holy…crap.

  There was a time in Susan’s life, when she was a teenager, when she would have killed for the look Grant was giving her right that moment.

  The look.

  A look John could melt her panties off her with—when he let her wear them.

  A look she hadn’t seen in two years.

  A look she craved, and a look that nearly made her burst into relieved tears to see on Grant’s face.

  And the tone of voice he’d used.

  Okay, so they were gay. Maybe when the three of them could sit down, alone, and talk, she could ask them about Darryl’s bracelet. If it had the same meaning as hers, maybe, as old friends, they’d let her curl up in their laps for a little while, give her a little bit of structure in their spare time, trusting that they wouldn’t fuck her over or treat her badly.

  This was Grant and Darryl. They’d proven themselves to her as kids. They’d protected her. They’d saved her ass against bullies. She refused to believe they’d turn out to be royal shits, even this many years and a lifetime later.

  Darryl turned from the bar with her margarita in his hand.

  Then she spotted his bracelet, on his right wrist.

  When she glanced back at Grant, the corner of his mouth had curled in an amused smirk she knew all too well. She’d sat through countless games watching him make that same expression when he knew he had the upper hand and he was simply biding his time. Especially when he was in the DM seat.

  But…they’re gay…

  Aren’t they?

  Darryl smiled as he handed her the large glass, and she immediately sucked down several swallows of the frozen drink.

  Susan had a strong suspicion she’d need a couple more of them to calm her nerves. She wasn’t a big drinker. In fact, it’d been…well, two years since she’d last had anything to drink.

  If the playful smirk on Grant’s face was any indication, the two men had progressed from Dungeons and Dragons to a more advanced level of dungeoneering.

  A far sexier one.

  “Look, D,” Grant said, gently taking her right wrist in his hand but not touching the bracelet. “Funny coincidence, huh? Looks a lot like yours, doesn’t it? Her husband gave it to her. Isn’t that sweet?”

  She struggled to breathe as Darryl’s smile spread, quirking his lips as his sweet brown gaze narrowed. “Don’t see many of those around. It’s beautiful.”

  She nodded, well aware that Corey and Marcy were—she assumed—clueless vanillas.

  It felt like she’d been dropped back into high school, the night of senior prom where the two men had escorted her to the dance. No one else had asked her, and she was going to skip it when the men found out. It wasn’t like her parents had the money to spend on her prom dress anyway when they were in the middle of duking it out in divorce court by that time.

  Grant and Darryl had pooled their money—with help from their parents—and had surprised her with a shopping trip to the mall to buy her a dress, which they’d picked out for her after having her try on several ones. They’d bought her prom ticket, paid for her dinner, and rented a limo to take them to prom and home again.

  It had been the best night of her life, until her honeymoon night with John.

  And it still ranked up there in the top two nights of her life, even this many years later.

  Both men had looked at her like this that night when the limo picked her up. They’d both gotten out and walked to her front door to get her.

  Somewhere, she still had their prom picture, the three of them together, the men standing behind her with their arms around her, their chins resting on her shoulders.

  Susan was that eighteen-year-old girl again, desperately in love with her two best friends and terrified to admit it for fear of them rejecting her, or it ruining that special bond they had.

  Now what was she supposed to do with that?

  With his gaze fixed firmly on hers, Grant gently curled his fingers around her hand, brought it up to his lips, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. Those damned gorgeous ice-blue eyes that she’d fantasized about so many long and lonely nights as a kid.

  “We’ve missed you, Susie,” Grant said. It felt like the world fell away around them. Like there wasn’t a pool deck full of half-drunk nearly forty-somethings splashing and talking just feet away from them. “You have no idea how glad we are you came this weekend.”

  It was just her and Grant, and sitting on her other side, Darryl. Unseen, since she felt impaled by Grant’s gaze, but the heat of Darryl’s body right there next to her washed through her.

  She slowly nodded. “Me, too.”

  He still hadn’t released her hand, still gently clasped in his on the table. “We’re glad you live locally, too. I feel badly that we didn’t know what you were going through.” Now his gaze changed, shifted. Concerned.

  It was nearly enough to make her cry, but she’d had a lot of practice over the past two years keeping a game face on at work.

  Darryl gently stroked her bare shoulder. “I hope you’ll think about joining our game,” he said.

  “The D and D game?” she asked, feeling weak and helpless against them but in the good way.

  Grant’s smile widened. “Sure. That, too.”

  Oh…wow.

  Holy crap, that sealed it. Time warped, changed, shifted. She was no longer Susan Costello, thirty-eight. She was Susie Carson, eighteen, and just as helpless against Grant Delaney as she had been back then. Lucky for her he hadn’t been an asshole in high school, or he could have easily been inside her pants.

  Instead, they’d had some never-ending not-quite-sexual tension between the three of them.

  Grant closed both his hands around hers, gently, yet possessively. “This is going to be a fun weekend,” he said, lightly squeezing her fingers.

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Boy, howdy.

  Chapter Five

  It wasn’t that Susie didn’t want to spend time catching up with Corey and getting to know his wife, but she wanted to be alone with Grant and Darryl.

  Really alone.

  If she was reading this entire situation completely wrong and the men had simply been innocently teasing her, she’d need more than a margarita to help her get over her disappointment.

  And she couldn’t remember if s
he’d brought any Xanax with her that weekend.

  Gauging by the look on Grant’s face, however, she instinctively knew she wasn’t reading this wrong.

  If anything, Grant now appeared to be getting off on deliberately toying with her the longer they talked, dropping little things here and there that the average nonkinky person wouldn’t likely pick up on.

  And he wouldn’t stop touching her. Neither of them would.

  Not that she wanted them to.

  One of them always had an arm draped around her shoulders, or was holding one of her hands, or had a hand resting on her thigh. It felt like the music pounding through the speakers on the pool deck was attached to a subwoofer hooked directly to her clit.

  Hello, libido, my old friend. It’s good to fuck with you again…

  She’d finished the first margarita and Darryl had jumped to get her a second drink before she could even ask for a refill. After Darryl left, Grant stroked her right arm, almost an imperceptible little tap with his finger to get her attention.

  Time folded and merged and it wasn’t just from the Sauza in her margarita, either.

  They were back in the lunchroom in high school and Grant was subtly getting her attention the way he had countless times before, or in class without the teacher catching on, or during a D and D game without alerting anyone else.

  Her eyes focused on his finger, where it rested on her arm before her gaze slowly rose.

  Somewhere deep in her brain the mindless bassline thump of the dance music faded out and mirror image of the soundtrack from Hannibal the TV show faded in, only without all the discordant percussion strokes and jarring notes. A more melodic, soothing tune as she followed the flow of Grant’s bare arm, smooth, still lithely muscled, over his shoulder and to the hollows at either side of the base of his throat, up his neck, along his strong jaw…

  The eyes. Those damned ice-blue eyes.

  They were alone at the table, or might as well have been. Nothing existed outside his gaze.

  One blond eyebrow arched just a little higher than the other over those devastatingly handsome ocular globes of his.

  “Just one more drink,” he quietly said, his lips barely moving. “All right?”

  Instinctively, she knew the right answer to this, as if it was the most important test of her life and she’d been cramming for it. Because despite how he’d worded his statement, it wasn’t a question, or even a request.

  It was a command.

  “Yes, Sir,” she whispered.

  His lips didn’t move, but his eyes narrowed, the outer edges crinkling, the smile instead settling there and all the more powerful for it.

  “That’s my good girl,” he whispered back, leaning in to press a kiss to her temple and pull her against him, his left arm securely draped around her shoulders.

  The world dropped back into place around them, jarring, jangling, but she didn’t feel jolted out of the soft, protective cocoon she now found herself wrapped in. Nothing short of a nuclear blast could have pulled her out of that mood at that moment.

  His arm.

  His embrace.

  His aura.

  His eyes.

  His good girl.

  His.

  She closed her eyes and, for the first time in two years, she didn’t have to force her smile as she rested her head against his shoulder, took a deep breath in, and slowly let it out again.

  Relief.

  Barely cracking her eyelids open, she looked, sought his right hand with her left, and drew his hand over her right wrist, covering her bracelet and pressing his fingers around it before closing her eyes again.

  Corey was still talking about…something. Their kids, she thought. Yes, she realized it was rude to be practically on her knees in front of Grant, so to speak, and ignoring their old friend.

  Even though no one else but she and Grant realized what had just happened because of the volume of the music on the pool deck and all the activity around them, she knew her life had just seismically shifted again.

  Only this time for the better.

  * * * *

  It was through sheer force of will Grant remained firmly planted in his chair instead of standing, being incredibly rude to Corey and Marcy, and scooping Susie into his arms and carrying her to a room. Theirs or hers, he didn’t care.

  Even if all they did that night was talk, that was fine, too. He just wanted to hold her, to keep her looking so utterly content as she did at that moment, the pain and grief completely gone for the first time that night and replaced by an expression so peaceful it bordered on bliss.

  The significance of her pulling his hand around her bracelet wasn’t lost on him.

  Darryl returned with her drink, his smile widening as he noticed her now nearly curled up in Grant’s lap. Well, not exactly, but for all intents and purposes.

  Their Susie, reunited with them.

  Hadn’t that been the problem all along? They were only perfect back then, in high school, and hadn’t even been having sex with each other. Not like the two men slutted around now, but while threesomes were…well, amazing, quite frankly, they’d always missed a little something Grant had hoped the next one might have.

  Her.

  She had been missing.

  He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her shampoo. Something light and floral, vaguely fruity.

  Something perfectly her.

  She didn’t drink this margarita as quickly, nursing it, savoring it. If anything was going to happen tonight, he didn’t want her drunk and waking up the next morning hungover and full of regrets simply because she’d let the booze and loneliness make up her mind for her.

  If she really wanted this, wanted them, she’d have to be able to give full, unimpaired consent to it.

  Looking back on high school, he could easily see the inevitability of this. Of the three of them he’d always been the leader, the shepherd, the one they looked to for a final call or decision, the one who’d been “in charge” by default.

  When she finished her margarita nearly an hour later, Darryl the ever-attentive one started to get up to get her a refill, but she reached out and caught his arm. “Just a soda water with lemon, please.”

  “Okay.” He gave her a smile, and then his gaze fell on Grant.

  Grant winked at him, broadening Darryl’s smile even more.

  This would work. He knew it would. Just like he’d known it would work that time when he’d brought a play-partner home and eased Darryl into the dynamic they now had.

  If only I’d known in high school what I know now, the three of us would probably be happy together with several kids already.

  Of course, he was getting a little old for kids. Kyle was more like a buddy even though he was the boy’s godfather. Grant still loved him, even if he couldn’t officially be the kid’s “stepfather.” He’d resigned himself to never having biological kids of his own, but he was okay with that. He had Darryl.

  And now it looked like they might get Susie back.

  During a lull in the conversation, when Marcy had gotten up to go to the bathroom and Darryl and Corey were busy talking, Grant turned Susie’s right hand palm-up and brought it to his lips, gently tracing lines across her palm with his tongue.

  He kept his eyes on hers, carefully watching.

  Her gorgeous green eyes, that beautiful dusty color, like fern leaves, had haunted his dreams way back when.

  Kissing her palm, he then pressed it against his chest. “Such a very good girl,” he whispered, gently squeezing her hand.

  He imagined she whimpered, or maybe gasped, but he couldn’t hear it over the music. Her lips parted slightly, a gorgeous pink flush starting to creep up her neck and toward her cheeks.

  Yeah, she wanted him. Hopefully wanted both of them. That would be the test, if she could accept both of them. Because no matter how much he wanted her, if she couldn’t take them both, it wouldn’t work. Maybe he could help her out with play, but he wouldn’t take things to a sexual level
with her if she didn’t want Darryl, too.

  Package deal.

  They sat there and talked until after eleven, never actually getting into the pool. Marcy started yawning first. “Sorry. Long day, and we were up early for our flight. I hate to bail on you guys, but I’m falling asleep.”

  “I don’t think I’m far behind you,” Corey said. “You all want to grab breakfast in the morning?”

  “Why don’t you text us?” Grant offered before either Susie or Darryl could answer. He stared into Susie’s eyes. “If we’re up, we might just do that.”

  They all stood and hugged, leaving Darryl, Grant, and Susie there at the table.

  Grant held out his hands to her, palms up. She seemed to take a deep breath before reaching out and taking his hands.

  Then she looked up into his eyes.

  “I think the three of us need to go talk, don’t we?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, Sir.” Her gaze never wavered from his, steady, sure.

  He pulled her in for a hug, Darryl stepping in close behind her. “Let’s head up to your room for now,” Grant suggested. “Then we’ll figure out where we go from there.”

  It felt like she was clinging to him, as if afraid to let go of him. “Yes, Sir.”

  Hand in hand, with Susie between them, the three of them headed inside and to the bank of elevators. Corey and Marcy must have already made it inside one, because they weren’t standing there.

  Grant couldn’t help stroking her hand with his thumb as they waited, well aware of Darryl’s nervous energy on her other side.

  This almost felt too easy. What would be the hang-up? What would be the road block?

  Or was this the Universe’s way of finally handing them a win for a change?

  * * * *

  Under threat of death Susan couldn’t have recounted a single damned thing they talked about with Corey and Marcy in any detail. Her entire focus remained on the two men, especially on Grant. Not that she was ignoring Darryl, but Grant’s dominant presence drew her, the literal moth to the flame.

  She worried that taking her focus off him for even a moment might mean she lost him. That it had been some sort of daydream or wishful thinking on her part.