Chapter 1 #2
Shay’s breathing becomes ragged. “I want you to.”
“I know.”
Shay can’t hide his excitement because his cock hardens against his stomach.
The good thing about being naked is that you can’t mask your relationship tells.
Shay doesn’t cover himself. D’Angelo has trained him out of that.
Losing to D’Angelo has always meant winning to Shay.
I prefer to at least try to win.
Eden stands up, slipping off his t-shirt.
Do I need to explain the rules to him again?
“Ehm, not to discourage you or anything because I’ll always want to see your chest,” I blurt, “but you didn’t lose yet. You don’t need to strip.”
Standing in the slant of sunshine between the pine trees, Eden looks like a beautiful Greek god but one with glinting, pierced nipples.
Then Eden crouches next to me, folding the t-shirt neatly and holding it out to me. “To sit on.”
My expression softens. “Thanks.”
I snatch the top, unable to resist breathing in the sweet and vanilla scent of the warm cotton, before placing it underneath myself with a happy sigh.
Shay sits up straighter. “Circle of Twins, bro. How about you slip off your pants and let me sit on them to save my poor arse too?”
Eden ignores his brother, prowling back to his place.
Shay crosses his arms. “Harsh.”
Eden’s lips twitch. “But fair.”
D’Angelo’s icy gaze locks with mine. “You look beautiful, cara mia, sitting there with the sun lighting your curves like a beautiful painting by Rubens. But why are you nervous?” He leans closer.
His cruel, sensual lips curl up at one side, dangerously flashing his teeth.
I feel caught. “Are you worried about the cards that you’re holding, hmm?
Or what I’m going to do to you after you strip off that last tiny, lacy piece of clothing? ”
I knew that these cards were only part of a larger wicked game.
Typical D’Angelo.
He stands up, leaning over me and tipping up my chin with a single finger.
I am suddenly more aware than I was before that he is fully dressed, while I am only wearing panties.
I shiver.
He plays dirty.
I shouldn’t have expected anything different.
After all, he is Jude fucking D’Angelo.
But then, I play dirty as well.
“Overcompensating, Sir?” I know the power of saying Sir.
I save it for special occasions to make sure that it has the most impact.
D’Angelo’s eyelashes flutter. I pull back just enough to lick over his finger; his breath hitches.
“I think that you’re the one who is nervous.
I’m winning those cufflinks. And how is it fair?
You started with an entire suit. I only had my dress. ”
“Some of us plan.”
“Scheme.”
“Organize.”
“Draw smutty drawings of their dastardly plans all over the margins of my Guide.” I point at a book that lies open as evidence to the side of our pile of clothes.
The book looks like a hockey strategy book in arctic blue and white with lines, arrows, and arcs on the front.
There is also a crude puck and hockey stick.
It was once my Guide to avoid dating hockey players after I divorced my cheating pro player husband, Wilder.
Yep, that resolution lasted as long as my New Year’s one not to eat chocolate.
Now, it’s a guide to loving my three men.
Over the last five months, we’ve turned it together into a journal of our explorations, kinks, and fantasies.
D’Angelo, who is a trained dom, has negotiated our contracts, boundaries, and limits. We have spent lazy weekends at his beach house chatting (in between skinny dipping and surfing), about what we have enjoyed or found more challenging. We take time after scenes to check in with each other.
D’Angelo is the King of Aftercare, including praise, warm baths, and snacks.
For a man who looks too dangerous to cuddle, he does a good job of it in the secrecy of our bed.
I squint at the stick drawings, which D’Angelo has drawn around the edges of Shay’s brief description of this date. “You’ve added inappropriate drawings of stick people playing poker, then stripping naked, before being chased primal play style through trees. In glitter pen.”
Shay eagerly peers over my shoulder at the book. “Are they trees? I thought that they were dildos.”
D’Angelo shoots Shay a look that promises retribution with dildos.
Shay only meets his glare with a cheeky grin.
D’Angelo arches a brow. “I stand by the accuracy of the diagram next to it.”
“What diagram…oh, that one.” I blush.
Eden keeps his gaze on his cards. “I don’t want to know.”
Shay wets his lips, studying the Guide. “You do a little bit, Dee.”
The Guide is more than our Hockey Kama Sutra. It has become a symbol and chronicle of our love, holding Shay’s music playlists, Eden’s reasons for loving me, and D’Angelo’s favorite cocktails.
It holds the photographs from our first Christmas together.
Our wild first New Year’s Eve.
Eden started the tradition of writing notes in it to me, when he was too overwhelmed to say things out loud.
I dreamed last night that we were in Alice’s Book Café bookshop together. Then we bought Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for our son. And he had your eyes.
The others have taken up the same tradition, for example, D’Angelo before Christmas:
Remember that thing we did after the game in Boston? I can’t stop thinking about how good you’re going to feel when we do it again…
Or Shay yesterday morning:
I ate the last of your strawberry ice cream. I’ll order more along with Eden’s chocolate ice cream tomorrow. Sorry, love.
Shay may have confused the Guide with the type of notepad you keep on your fridge.
But his messages still make me smile.
D’Angelo elegantly lounges on the floor next to the Guide, as if he’s in a cocktail bar rather than a forest.
He swirls his finger suggestively over the stickmen. “Don’t they appear to be having a good time…?”
“You’re distracting me.” I sit straighter at the realization. Then my gaze slides to the diamond cufflinks that D’Angelo has taken off to bet. “You bet the cufflinks first because they’re your tell. You fidget with them three times when you’re bluffing.”
“Do I?” D’Angelo’s lips quirk. “I guess that you won’t know because you can’t read my tell anymore.”
Eden shoots D’Angelo a look filled with dark respect.
Does D’Angelo have good cards?
Shay whistles. “You’re brilliant, darlin’. Can I play on your team?”
D’Angelo snorts. “Unfortunately, I don’t have the same exhibitionist streak as you do. I prefer to keep my clothes on in public.”
“Who taught you to play so well?” I ask.
For a moment, D’Angelo’s expression clouds. “Someone who taught me to play the player and not the cards.”
My brow furrows.
Who does he mean?
Even having known D’Angelo since college, there are parts of his life that I still don’t know.
I wish that I did. But I can’t rush him.
“Dad taught me,” I say, quietly. “When I was a teenage, he would invite over his friends and play every Wednesday night for beer caps. I was so excited to be allowed into his world by staying up and playing with them.”
Dad is Austin McKenna and coach of the Bay Rebels. A man who has far too much control over all our lives.
Shay grasps my hand.
“Was your brother invited to play too?” Eden’s intense gaze settles on me.
I swallow, shaking my head.
Eden’s lips pinch.
What should be a happy memory is shadowed by knowing that I wasn’t the only one who wanted to be a part of my dad’s poker nights.
Yet Cody’s existence was barely acknowledged by Dad.
Some evenings, I remember the heartwrenching glimpse of Cody’s sweet, freckled face at the door to the kitchen. He was silent, while the players were loud and laughing.
Dad always held court in the heart of the house.
Cody would stare in at us, as if everything he’d desired was just inside but out of reach. He stared longingly at the love and attention being offered to these strangers so casually by Dad, while he was standing alone and ignored.
Story of our fucking life.
My eyes sting with tears, when the sudden memory floods back of the worst poker night, when Dad finally did notice Cody. Instead of inviting him in to join us, however, he stormed across to my brother in front of everyone.
Several of the men stood, trying to calm Dad down.
Dad shrugged them off.
“Dad,” I tried, standing up.
“Sit down,” Dad barked at me, red-faced. “Everyone, keep playing. I need to go deal with my bad boy.”
He grabbed Cody by the scruff of the neck and dragged him away down the corridor toward his study.
How many times did Dad call Cody bad, challenging, difficult, when all Cody wanted was to be allowed to be part of our family?
Our Mom had died the year before.
The three of us had only truly had each other after that. But I now understand that Cody never even had that.
He’d never had Dad.
Shay notices my gleaming eyes and tightens his hold on my hand.
“Hey, love, I’m here. I’ve got you. It’s your dad’s loss if he didn’t include your brother because Code is an incredible bloke.
We make our own family, and Code is part of it.
” He rests his forehead against mine. “Blythe was a bitch about poker too. She played it professionally online. It’s why I wanted to do this. Make it ours but in a fun way, yeah?”
D’Angelo stiffens at the same time that Eden does.
“Is this something that either of you need to talk about?” D’Angelo asks, carefully.
Shay and I shake our heads.
“I’ll just burn coach and Blythe,” Eden says.
“Vetoed,” Shay and I both reply at the same time.
Then we laugh and squeeze each other’s hands.
“Before we turn to arson,” D’Angelo quirks his brow, “I suggest that we set up a reward on the hockey games around these cards. We are so close to making Bay Rebels history and reaching the playoffs. Let’s also reclaim these cards from our pasts.”
Eden rests his strong arms on his knees. “My plan is simpler.”
“Also a touch psychopathic.”
Eden shrugs.
I perk up. “Kinky card games! Bring it on.”