14. Sebastian
14
SEBASTIAN
T he next month was absolute chaos.
Adam was preparing for the lead in a Patrick Sullivan movie about a British gangster in the 1970s. The first table read was at the end of the month, so he had me run lines with him almost every day. It was fascinating to watch him learn a character, to witness, as the days passed, the way he sank further and further into the role until the day before the read-through dawned, and he was suddenly Freddie Bannerman, the scarred and angry ex-con who unexpectedly found himself king of a drug empire in London.
While he was busy with preparations and promotion for his upcoming film release, The Devil Cares , I spent most of my time either with Savannah, driving her to and from appointments, stopping for lunches around town or going shopping, sometimes, entirely for me so she could dress me up like a real-life doll. She was surprisingly fun when she let her guard down, laughing at my quips and teasing me for my silliness. She seemed so much younger than her thirty-four years when she was with me.
Thirty-four years old. She’d coyly refused to tell me how old she was for so long that I’d finally capitulated and looked it up myself.
Adam was twenty-eight.
They were both so much older than me, successful and wealthy and wise in so many ways I was decidedly not . It should have felt too much like a power imbalance, like I was nothing compared to them, with nothing to offer.
But, shockingly, I seemed to offer them a lot.
I made Savannah laugh and relax when she was usually focused to a point that made her icy and rigid as frozen stone. I made Adam gentle, the powerful facade he erected for everyone softening a bit for me. They both sought me out when they had time and seemed almost… jealous when the other had more of me. It wasn’t a poisonous sentiment but more of a childlike one. They both wanted my time individually and together.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have much of the latter.
I wasn’t sure how Savannah and Adam even had a functioning marriage, thanks to their schedules. They barely saw each other except for public outings and late at night, when the three of us would fall into bed together.
And that happened almost every night when they were both at home, but never if one was away. It wasn’t said explicitly, but I soon learned the rules of the Meyers’s household.
I could kiss either of them whenever the mood arose, but beyond that, except for that first night I’d moved in out in the garden, we weren’t to take it any further without the third person to bear witness.
Yet there also seemed to be a kind of rigidity to our nights together. It was always about Savannah, and the tension made me wonder if it was by mutual design or because she refused to let the attention wander away from her for even a moment. I was growing to know Savvy well enough to surmise it was probably some of the latter. She liked to feel powerful, the mover and shaker. Even though she wasn’t the one with the Oscar, she had flex and influence in the movie industry in Britain, and it was obvious she enjoyed when people came calling for a favour or opinion on their work. Even when Adam received praise, she smiled coyly, a little curl of her lips that spoke of pride and a hint of arrogance.
It’s all because of me , that look seemed to say.
And I was learning that a lot of it was because of her.
But not all of it.
Just as not all of my attraction in this dynamic was toward Savannah alone.
I just hadn’t had any opportunity to explore it otherwise.
Unsurprisingly, I also had to be available at all times.
Once, I was speaking with Cosima over the phone, so I hadn’t noticed the incoming calls and texts for almost an hour. When I checked, Savvy had tried to reach me ten times, and when I finally called her back, she told me not to bother.
She didn’t speak to me for three days.
I didn’t take it too personally even though it hurt. These people operated differently than me. If I was fire, Savannah and Adam were ice. They punished with silence and distance, not shouting and tears the way my family did at home.
They also were not physically affectionate outside of our “playdates” as Adam called them. Adam was almost painfully careful not to stand too close or touch too obviously when we were in public, though truthfully, we spent most of our time together shut away from the world in their house or at Pinewood Studios or Andrea’s house.
Even Savannah seemed to find casual affection distasteful when we were alone.
It was an odd house with odder people, but I was shocked by how much I loved living with them both.
I was used to a full house; growing up in a tiny home in Naples with three sisters, one of those a twin, and an Italian mother was often a chaotic, cacophonous experience. Living with the Meyerses was leagues different than that, and I might have felt lonely or even used if it weren’t for those nighttime rendezvous and daily flashes of intimacy they unwittingly gave to me.
The moment Savannah admitted she missed proper American barbecue, I’d surprised her with a Styrofoam case of pulled pork and brisket from Prairie Fire, where the pit master was a direct transplant from Kansas. She’d smeared barbecue sauce on my mouth with her fingers and licked it off with a girlish giggle. I’d fed her messy pork with my fingers and then made her lick them off when we were done.
Another when she got a cold the night before a movie premiere and had to stay home instead of going out with Adam. She was mostly upset, she’d informed me, about not wearing the gorgeous Dior vintage gown hanging in her closet for the evening. So I’d stepped into one of the suits the Meyerses had bought for me––hand-tailored on Savile Row––and presented myself to Savannah, where she was curled up on the couch watching the red carpet. She’d looked so small and young, make-up free and melancholy, and younger still when she’d taken in my appearance and the dress I had carefully folded over one arm and started to smile.
We watched the rest of the coverage together in our fancy clothes on the carpet in front of the television while eating popcorn.
It was different with Adam. We were either playing with Savannah, where our focus was always almost wholly on her, or we were working together on his lines or on preparing Blood Oath . He wanted to fast-track everything, especially when he found out Cosima and I were paying not only for Mama and Elena in Naples, with hopes to move them to the United States soon, but also for Giselle’s tuition at L’école des Beaux-Arts in Paris. While he worked on securing financing and studio backing, Andrea and I worked over the script. It was incredible to work with an Italian on my story about Italian characters, but it was even better to have someone who understood my language and culture. It made me homesick while simultaneously soothing the ache of missing stitched into my chest.
With Adam, he showed his true self in smaller but more frequent ways than his wife. He did it by putting his hand on my thigh while he drove us both, always, around in his Aston. When he woke me up each morning before Savannah, with a bite to my shoulder or a kiss to my neck, taking advantage of the private moments of the morning to touch me not like a lover but like a partner. As though he just wanted to touch me because he liked me. When he was home, we worked out together in their basement home gym, pushing each other and competing so that every exercise was a game. Seeing him half naked and slicked in sweat was a lesson in temptation I’d never expected to learn.
Even though he was often gone, he would text me articles he thought I’d find interesting about the industry or ask my thoughts on his next projects. He valued me for more than my beauty in ways that no one outside of my family ever had before.
I was quite honestly living on cloud nine for that entire month. My only anxieties came from wondering when Adam would finally get around to touching me beyond a naked caress as he used and ordered my body to please his wife. We hadn’t gone past holding each other’s cocks, and I was astonishingly eager to try more, but not without his coaching. It was starting to keep me up at night after my lovers had dropped into sleep, wondering when and how.
Otherwise, for the first time in my life, I was truly happy. Until one morning, a month after moving, when a stranger reminded me of my reality.
I’d dropped Adam off for his read-through, and I was heading to meet Andrea for coffee nearby when I quite literally ran into a slim, dark-haired man.
“Watch where you’re going,” he barked, shoving away from me a little harshly for something that was just an accident.
I arched an eyebrow at him, unconsciously channeling Adam. “I think you were the one to run into me, actually. But no harm, no foul. Have a good rest of the morning.”
I made to move past when I felt a firm grip on my elbow. When I stopped and looked back with a glare, the man was frowning at me.
“You’re Sebastian Lombardi.”
I blinked, a little thrown off by the recognition. Oh, a few regulars at Finborough Theatre had recognized me during the play’s run through the late summer and fall, but it wasn’t anything like a regular occurrence.
“Yes, I am.”
His face broke into a slight, mean smile, and he shifted his grip to my hand, shaking it aggressively. “Well, what a boon. It’s my pleasure to meet you.”
“Why exactly?” There was something about his demeanour that was vaguely threatening.
He was slightly built with pretty features and a sharp chin that, combined with his mean grin, made him look vulpine.
“Well, I’ve been curious about who Adam and Savannah replaced me with.”
Cazzo .
The words rocked me back like a blow to the sternum, but I was practiced enough at acting to keep the way I reeled beneath my skin.
“That’s curious. I thought their last chauffeur was an old man. You look remarkably well for your age.”
He flinched slightly, and his smile grew even more malicious as his grip tightened painfully on my hand. “I was before Albert, and I think we both know I occupied a very different position than that.”
“Given I don’t even know your name, I don’t think you should make assumptions about anything,” I warned, squeezing his hand even more tightly in return. “And I wouldn’t want to be caught spreading any gossip about the Meyerses. I think they won their last defamation suit fairly handily.”
He laughed then, a sharp sound like nails on a chalkboard. “Oh, don’t worry about your lovers’ reputation, pretty boy. I signed all the same NDAs you did. I just wanted to warn you, man to man, former boy toy to current, that the Meyerses will drop you just when you’re starting to feel comfortable. They’ll make you such pretty promises and build you up until you think you might burst, and then they’ll drop you from such a great height, you’ll shatter at the impact. It took me six months to get myself together again. I’m only trying to save you the same aggravation. Adam’s internalized homophobia is so bad, he can barely stand himself when he’s with a man, and Savannah just wants to be worshipped. She doesn’t care by whom.”
“Who is calling who a pretty boy toy?” I asked, accent thickening with rage, his fingers creaking under my grip until he winced. “I may be young, but I’m no boy. I’ve seen more in my life than you have in any of your wildest dreams or nightmares. You worry about yourself; it seems you need to if being let go by your employers took such a toll on you. But me? I’ll be just fine. Now, good day, stranger.”
I pulled my hand from his sweaty grip and turned on my heel, filled with rage and aching with confusion as I stalked back toward the car.
“It’s Oscar,” he called after me, uncaring of the people filing in and out of the studio behind us. “Oscar Hampton. Ask them about me, and you’ll see I was only trying to help you, poor sod.”
I slammed the car door behind me and peeled out of the lot in the town car, cranking up the radio on an Italian station. Umberto Tozzi filled the car's interior as I sped through the streets toward my meeting with Andrea.
I didn’t want to let Oscar’s words sink into my psyche without first asking Adam or Savvy about them, but it was hard to close myself off from his remarks. They were too pointed to be all lies. It was obvious Oscar was close enough to them to know they liked to bring a third into their marital bed, but did that mean everything else he’d said was true?
I felt sick thinking about being kicked out of their bed and their home. Not because of what it might mean to Blood Oath ––I thought Andrea was invested enough to continue with the project anyway––but because of what such a separation would do to me.
Drop me from such a great height I’d shatter at the bottom .
It was only now that the threat of our tryst’s inevitable end seemed so tangible that I realized how happy the Meyerses made me .
The way Savannah made sure there was good grappa in the house and Italian staples like buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto in the fridge and double 00 flour in the pantry in case I had the taste for authentic homemade pasta. The way she bought me clothes—not because she was ashamed of me but because she loved to spoil me. Gift giving was obviously her love language as much as acts of service.
The way Adam bought me a fancy laptop with all of his favourite films loaded onto the movie player so we could discuss them together. The way he knew I loved football, so he made a point to invite the great Spanish player Iker Ferrera over one night as a surprise. The way he listened to every thought in my head as though he could learn something from me.
They always touched me in the dark cover of night, as if I were living art they wanted to worship with teeth and tongue and fingertips. They made themselves vulnerable to me in a way they never did outside the sanctuary of their bedroom.
I was falling in love with them both.
It was painfully obvious it had been happening almost from the first moment I’d met each of them, and I couldn’t even be angry with myself for not trying harder to resist it.
She was just such a woman, and he such a man; how could I ever have hoped to resist their gravitational pull?
But Oscar had thrown into stark relief just how tenuous our situation was.
I was their temporary lover, a guest in their marriage who would inevitably wear out his welcome. There was no permanency, and I was a man who longed for such a thing because I’d never really had it.
It was a lose/lose situation at this point, though.
If I left on my terms, I’d be breaking my own heart, and when they eventually asked me to leave, they’d do the breaking instead.
Either way, I’d be shattered.
Maybe, if I’d been a different man, I would have accepted the unavoidable conclusion of either path.
But I’d been raised to fight.
To bare my teeth at the enemy no matter how much more powerful they were than me and stand my ground like I had a real shot of winning the battle.
It had worked with one of the most fearsome criminal organizations in the world, and it had helped me secure a spot at Finborough Theatre despite my inexperience and the obstacles stacked against me.
Maybe it had given me an overblown sense of courage in the face of adversity, but I had just enough gumption to think I could change the outcome.
Because what if there was a third option?
What if I could convince Adam and Savannah to fall in love with me, too?
What if none of this had to end at all?
The stage was perfectly set when the Meyerses arrived home that evening. I’d done the bulk of the work, but Chaucer had helped me procure a couple of extra things and choose a bottle from their cellar that they wouldn’t mind drinking for a casual dinner at home. If Chaucer thought it was strange that the chauffeur had taken it upon himself to cook the lord and lady of the house dinner, she didn’t mention it or even cast me a sidelong look. She was efficient in the extreme. After being Adam’s personal assistant for the last half decade, I was sure she’d seen worse than an Italian man hankering to cook one of his regional dishes.
In fact, Adam and Savannah seemed entirely more shocked than she had, when they walked into the kitchen and saw me at the stove with a black apron tied around my waist, stirring a sizzling pan of sauce. Jazz played softly in the background because it was Adam’s favourite genre, and we usually listened to Savannah’s classical instead. After Chaucer left, I’d lit candles all over the island and the cozy table by the corner of windows instead of in the formal dining room.
I’d never attempted to do something romantic like this in my life. Girls in London were usually happy to go for a pint at the pub and then back to my place for a casual romp before disappearing from my life. It wasn’t that I only wanted casual sex, but I’d been so busy with the play and focused on my career that I hadn’t made time for romance.
Now, I had plenty of toe-curling, insane orgasms and the kind of comradery with Savvy and Adam I’d always wanted, but I knew it wasn’t enough. I’d become greedy for more, and I had the sinking feeling that nothing would be enough of them, short of absolutely everything.
So this was my first attempt at wooing someone––someone s ––and I was uncharacteristically nervous. This is why I slipped into my old, confident persona like an old, beloved coat as soon as the Meyerses stepped into my domain. Because it may have been their house, but it was my stage today, and I planned to own it.
“ Buona sera, le mie bellezze ,” I greeted them with a wide grin, placing the spoon in the marble rest so I could pour the decanted wine into two goblet glasses.
They both stood arrested in the doorway as I walked toward them. I even had to wrap Savannah’s hand around the stem of the glass before she took it.
I pressed a kiss to both of her silken cheeks and then took the liberty to steal one from her mouth. Only then did she soften, leaning forward to press her breasts into my chest. When I pulled away, her eyes were closed and her mouth was a softly unfurled rosebud.
I smiled at her, not the showboating grin I wielded so often, but a true one just for her.
And him.
I turned to give Adam his glass. He accepted it with a wariness that made my gut ache. My kindness had him on edge, waiting for something the way a beaten dog receiving gentle attention doesn’t believe he won’t be struck for taken liberties.
What had happened to him to make him so afraid of his own desires?
I tried to remember what I’d read of his history, about the lord and lady parents who lost their ancestral estate but still lived in luxury because of the success of their son somewhere in the Cornish countryside. I’d always assumed Britain was more liberal and accepting than my native Italy, but I wondered if I was terribly wrong and Adam had been castigated for his sexuality.
I shook off the thought and gave him his own cheek kisses. When I moved in to press my mouth to his, he held himself still as though he couldn’t trust himself or me.
I took it as a dare, whether it was meant to be or not, that I could make him break his control.
My hand slid around the back of his neck, fingers digging into the short hairs at his nape as I changed my angle and sealed my mouth over his. My tongue slid between his lips without asking, plundering his warm mouth as though I had the right. A choked-off groan was my only response before I broke contact and stepped back.
“Welcome home,” I greeted them both. “Sit down at the island and enjoy the wine while I finish things off. It shouldn’t take long. I know you’re both probably famished.”
They both blinked at me, but Savannah was the one to move first. She was used to being catered to, my duchessa , so it was easy for her to take this in stride. I watched as she glided to a barstool and daintily perched on the edge, her wineglass dangling elegantly from her fingers.
“What are you making us, Sebastian?” she asked as though she always came home to an Italian in her kitchen.
I grinned. “ Spaghetti alla puttanesca .”
“Well, that sounds exotic,” she demurred before lightly adding, “Adam, come sit with me.”
He moved a little stiffly to the barstool beside her, but sat down and looked at his wife, avoiding the sight of me moving about his kitchen so familiarly.
I wondered if I’d miscalculated.
Oscar’s words rang in my inner ear, Adam’s internalized homophobia .
“I thought it was fitting for you lot,” I teased Savvy as I stirred the fragrant sugo and then went to the fridge to grab the hand-rolled pasta I’d made earlier that afternoon. “It’s pasta in the style of a whore.”
I made sure to watch them both as I delivered my line and was rewarded with a shocked bark of laughter from Adam and a little grin from Savvy. My heart warmed watching them, seeing Adam’s shoulders soften just a touch and Savannah settle more comfortably in the stool, kicking off her high heels.
“Very fitting,” Adam allowed with a rakish look. “I might have to reward you in that style later tonight.”
“I wish you would,” I agreed, turning slightly as though I wasn’t watching him while I dropped the pasta into the gently boiling water to cook. “In fact, I know we haven’t really discussed it. But I was hoping we could take things a little further tonight.”
Instantly, the newly relaxed atmosphere in the room stretched taut.
“Oh?” he asked mildly.
“What did you have in mind, Seb?” Savannah asked, only a trace amount of eagerness in her tone.
We’d fallen into a routine of fucking Savannah together, lavishing her again and again as both our queen and our pleasure slave, a contrary union that shouldn’t have been able to exist but somehow flourished between us. We used our hands and lips on her, fucked her mouth and her cunt, but we hadn’t done anything where Adam and I were particularly intimate ourselves. Even fucking Savannah together, one of us in both her sweet holes, stretching her wide and filling her. Adam talked about it when he spoke his delicious filth to us both in bed, but for whatever reason, we hadn’t crossed that boundary.
I wanted to desperately, not just because I knew Savannah would love it, come apart at her seams around the full breach of us inside her, but because I wanted to feel Adam.
He had promised to introduce me to intimacy with a man, and even though my attraction to him had startled me at first, I was more than willing to delve further. If I was being honest, I was just as wildly attracted to him as I was to Savannah, and I grew increasingly dissatisfied with our lack of involvement.
I shrugged one shoulder in faux nonchalance. “I was thinking Savannah’s grown bored of us servicing her mouth and pussy. Maybe she’d like one of us in her tight little ass. Maybe even while the other is fucking her pussy.”
Adam and Savannah both loved dirty talk to the point they could get hard and wet after just a few minutes of spoken filth. It was something I loved about them, knowing I just had to verbalize exactly what I wanted from them both to get an explosive reaction.
And they didn’t disappoint.
“Oh,” Savannah said, that beautiful flush the colour of the wine in her cup spilling down her front.
Adam licked his lips and rubbed his hand over his square, stubbled chin as though he had to think about it. But I knew that tell. It was only to draw attention away from the way his lids lowered and his eyes went black.
“Well, well, look who’s getting creative,” he practically purred.
I swallowed thickly and shrugged again, turning away to stir the sauce and turn it down to a simmer. A moment later, I almost jumped out of my skin when Adam’s hands bracketed me at the counter, his breath a hot line down my neck.
“You want to fuck her together?” he husked out, and even though he wasn’t touching me, I felt his presence draped all the way down my back. “You want me to sit her on your thick cock and work my way inside her tight arse?”
I nodded a little helplessly, reaching down to adjust my erection in my jeans beneath the apron. Adam’s hand caught mine in an iron grip before I could do so. He flattened my hand to the counter and reached down himself to grip my cock and adjust it more comfortably down one thigh.
Dio mio , it was the first time he’d touched my dick in days, and I wanted more.
“Is this why you’re being so good to us? Cooking us dinner, greeting us with that smile of yours that could light an entire city? Because you want permission to split Savannah open on our cocks?”
I bit out a curse, and I could hear Savannah shift on her stool like she was rubbing her thighs together.
Why was it so fucking hot when Adam slid into the dominant role? It was one thing to want a man sexually and quite another to submit to him so easily as I found myself doing all the time, but I couldn’t connect logic to it other than to say it was simply his effect on me.
I admired him enough, trusted him another, to take control and let me just… enjoy pleasure for once in my life.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But also, because I like to do nice things for you.”
I turned in the cage of his arms to catch his wary expression. Before he could pull away, I wrapped my hand around his throat, fingertips pressing into his pulse point so I could feel it race away from me.
“You deserve them,” I admitted softly but loud enough for Savannah to hear. “Both of you deserve something warm and beautiful to come home to.”
Adam swallowed thickly, tension in the tall, strong line of his body. But he didn’t pull away, and I decided I’d put him through enough. I pressed forward to kiss him, a hard stamp of possession, before pushing him away and draining the pasta.
“Sit down at the table,” I told them both, listening to the sounds of them obeying me as I prepared the pasta dish, grabbed the focaccia from a nearby Italian bakery from the oven, and the light green salad I’d prepared from the fridge.
Once everything was laid at the table, I took off the apron and sat down with them.
“Next time, I’d prefer to come home to you cooking just in that,” Savannah requested, a slight twitch to her mouth.
Adam smiled a little, but I laughed as I served her first. “Noted, duchessa . I’d worry about flying oil splatter, but I’m willing to brave that and worse for you.”
“How flattering,” she said dryly as she allowed me to fill her plate and refill her wine. When I was finished, she put a hand on my wrist and leaned forward out of her chair to steal a lingering kiss. Her eyes were warmer than I’d ever seen, a lush blue. “Thank you, Sebastian.”
“My pleasure,” I assured her before turning to serve Adam.
“I’m capable of dressing my own plate,” he protested, but he didn’t stop me, and when I finished, he reached beneath the table to squeeze my thigh.
“Well then, buon appetito ,” I said, raising my glass and waiting for them both to look me in the eyes before we clinked them together. “To us.”
There was a second of hesitation before they both echoed me.
“To us.”