Chapter Seven
The silence didn’t last long after Winter pulled out of the parking lot.
“Spill.”
“What?”
“You disappeared with Ramsay and came back with dirty knees. I’m not an idiot.”
He found the thumb drive and plugged it into the dash. The recording they had made of their rehearsal earlier in the day blared through the car. Winter cranked down the volume and raised her eyebrows at him. No chance of getting out of it.
“I’ve supported your little experiment up until now, Mack Vincent. If you don’t tell me what happened, I’m officially counting it as cheating and you can move the fuck out.”
Hardass. Mack covered his face with his hands, momentarily reliving the feeling of Ramsay’s domination, then his cold dismissal after the fact. What had he expected? Apparently feeling used wasn’t one of his kinks, but had he really thought that Ramsay would be friendly about it afterward?
He hadn’t seemed unwilling, though. Not when he grabbed Mack by the back of the hair and forced him down on his cock.
There wasn’t a point in the rest of the evening where his dick had actually taken a break. He couldn’t get off in the alleyway after Ramsay had gone – he’d felt exposed and vulnerable. After waiting around for a few minutes wondering what the hell he’d just done, he’d followed Ramsay back inside. After they sat together at the table with the girls for another drink, they’d called it an early night.
Winter knew. He didn’t think Saya had been entirely fooled, either.
He could still taste Ramsay on his tongue. Shifting in his seat, he readjusted his cock.
“Do you want step-by-step detail, or a summary?” His voice was hoarse.
“Jeez, you blow the guy and now you sound like him.”
Mack groaned and slumped in his seat as far as the seatbelt would allow. “How can you be so flippant about this? I gave Ramsay a blowjob in an alley behind a bar. I feel pretty fucking classy right now.”
“Does he have a big dick?”
“Winter! I’m not even dignifying that with an answer.”
She was laughing at him. “Quit being prissy and answer the fucking question.”
He gazed out the window as the city slipped by and wondered if Saya would dare grill Ramsay like this on their own way home. Unlikely. Lucky bastard.
“I’d say he’s thicker than me, but not as long, maybe. Hard to tell since I’ve never sucked my own cock. Maybe you could go down on us one after the other and let me know.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen. I know you have the hots for him, but his attitude fucks me off.” She turned off onto the freeway and headed toward Cobalt Harbor.
“He’s a Dom. You work around enough of them, between Cross, Malachi, and Jude hanging around the store. It’s not like he’s more alpha.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. He acts like he owns me. Other guys don’t try that shit with me.”
“He’s got a serious hard-on for you. He’s probably not like that with other people.”
“So I’m supposed to be flattered?” They fell silent for a few minutes, then Winter snorted. “If he’s that big you’re going to have a hard time when he fucks your ass.”
He felt the blood drain from his face. Somehow, seeing how well Ramsay was endowed, had helped him decide that he wasn’t game for that.
“I’ll help you out. The next time we go to the sex shop in Felix, we’ll buy graduated sizes of butt plugs and we’ll have you all ready by the time things go that far. Although this spontaneous back-alley blowjob leads me to believe we should probably hurry up.” She passed a car going under the speed limit and chuckled to herself.
He knew she was teasing him, but the insinuation that he was a whore still bit. “No. Fuck off. Can we please change the subject?” Winter was still amused, but Mack plunged on. “So what did you and Saya talk about?”
“Other than speculating what you two were up to? This and that. She’s a sweet little thing. Smarter than I thought she was, too. We talked about philosophy for a while, actually.”
“The philosophy of watching your men get it on?”
“Mmm...yeah. That too.” She looked at him and winked then turned back to the road. “I fished around to see how she felt about the fact that I’ve been hitting on her. If you’d been five minutes later coming back she might have been in my lap.”
“Well, that answers that question. It’s not the booze.”
“Yeah, Ramsay asking her to be the designated driver made that easier to figure out.”
Ramsay’s name coming from Winter’s mouth made his heart race. He’d admitted what had happened, but parts of it – the details – were rolling around in his head. There wasn’t part of it that he didn’t itch to draw, but he knew that no drawing would ever capture the swamp of feelings he was still wading through.
“That and her giving me the big eager eyes all night. She’s fascinated by my cleavage, even though there’s not much to look at.”
Mack refrained from swatting her while she was driving. “You’re perfect, Winter. Not every woman has to be curvy with big tits.”
Her tongue poked out and licked at one of her lip rings, which was always a sensual thing to watch. Between Ramsay and now Winter, he was going to end the night with a serious case of blue balls.
“She’s a sex goddess compared to me, but she’s too meek to take advantage of it. Good thing, too. It would suck to have a boner for a total bitch.”
“The last I checked, you didn’t have the equipment to get a boner.”
“Girls get them too, they’re just more...polite.”
Mack leaned back in the seat and slid his hand onto Winter’s thigh. Automatically, she shifted her legs further apart and tipped her hips toward his hand when he reached towards her core.
She groaned and ground against his hand before he pulled away, not wanting to distract her from driving.
“Did that girl get you all horny again?”
Winter made a sound of protest then subsided. They had mutually agreed upon rules regarding sexual contact while driving. “Mmm. Yes. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea for me to get closer to her, though. She makes me think terrible, terrible things.”
“What? Like you want to defile her?”
“Yeah, but there’s more than that. I get all weird and bossy with her. I can’t seem to help it.”
“Are you having dommy feelings, Winter?” Mack mimicked his high school guidance counselor in a syrupy falsetto.
“Yes, ma’am. Is that normal?”
“How about I’ll interrogate you when we get home and see how serious you are?”
She bit her lip and stole a glance at him. “Interrogate me? With needles and knives?” To any other observer she might have looked nervous, but he picked up on the subtle excitement in her voice.
“It’s been a while since I took out my police baton.” he mused.
The tiny whimper that escaped her went straight to his cock.
“But it hurts,” she whispered.
“Yes. Yes it does.”
*
The stir-fried beef hissed in the pan as he sliced peppers to throw in when Winter walked through the door. Getting supper done early gave them more time to hang out in the evening, even if tonight’s date was all about doing laundry. It seemed like ages since they’d been alone and he wanted her to see he was making an effort.
Sharing each other with another couple was weird and made him hyper-aware of Winter’s every expression when they were together. He’d been the one to take the first big step into that situation, but his interest in Ramsay and Saya wasn’t worth messing up the good thing he had going with Winter.
When they’d met three years ago in line at a comic book signing, he’d been a bit of a dork. Winter, on the other hand, was the kind of girl he’d always dreamed about – self-confident, sexy, badass. The line had been so long that striking up a conversation had been inevitable. She’d been kind, but it was all too obvious that although she had thought he was worth talking to and they had a lot in common, she wasn’t even slightly interested in him. Mack had pursued her for months, nonchalantly. They’d grown closer. Eventually, because he made himself available to her anytime, he’d become the go-to for relationship advice, even though all of his own relationships had been short.
She’d had another failed relationship with a Dom who’d tried to dom her, when all she wanted was pain. Talking it through with Mack had been inevitable. Out of frustration, she’d asked him if he would hurt her – no sex, just pain. It had evolved into so much more.
In essence, he was her Frankenstein’s monster. She’d trained him and something inside him had clicked. Hard. Now, if she ever left him, he didn’t think he could turn it back off.
Winter took pain in a way that made it art. Beauty in ugliness. But she was so beautiful that anything around her was made more beautiful in relation. Like him. Now people often told him that he was gorgeous, but no one had ever noticed him before she had. His own beauty was about her.
The love had come later, as did her lust for him. No romance novel there. However, they were proof that love could grow out of anything, even relationships built on convenience. He’d loved her enough for the both of them, until she’d felt it too. Now, when she looked at him, it was with more depth and meaning than he’d ever hoped for.
Things with Ramsay and Saya weren’t worth jeopardizing what they had together, if she wasn’t into it. She liked Ramsay’s little submissive well enough, but the Dom was going to be the issue. Maybe if he didn’t get so dommy with her?
The door opening drew him out of his thoughts. He threw the vegetables into the pan then stirred them. Keys dropped on the table in the entryway. She came into the room and their gazes found each other. He grinned like an idiot, as always. Her eyes lit.
How did he even deserve her?
“How was work?”
“Slow day. We did a lot of restocking, but we got a call that a tour bus of teenagers are coming in from Felix in the morning. It’s happening way too often lately. The buses are exhausting.”
He chuckled. “You just get tired of little boys asking you on dates.”
“And girls. There are always a few of those.”
“You’re cool and sexy. You’ve always had a line-up.”
Winter slid her hands inside his t-shirt and let her fingers trace the ridges of the muscle he had there now instead of baby fat. Even her healthy eating habits had rubbed off on him.
Everywhere she touched, the skin awoke, sensitized, longing for more.
Mack tipped his head, offered his lips, and she kissed him like she’d been affection starved for a year – sweetly, the way people kissed in old movies instead of in porn.
A horror movie scream erupted from Winter’s back pocket and they broke apart.
“You seriously need to change that ringtone. It makes me hit the roof every time.” He turned back to stir their food as she fished her phone out of her back pocket.
“Hello?”
He grabbed two plates from the drying rack and turned the burner down to keep their dinner warm while she got rid of whoever it was.
While he waited, he made her tea with the water he’d already boiled, and fixed it the way she liked.
Behind him, Winter had started pacing the kitchen, the wooden floor boards creaking underfoot. Her noises were mostly acknowledgements that she’d heard what was being said, and she gave him no other clues.
“I’ll talk to them,” she finally said. “Bye.”
Them?
She accepted the teacup he held out to her, and followed him to the breakfast nook. It took two seconds to dish food onto their plates. He set the plates down in their spots and scooted in beside her. When he’d settled, she shifted closer so that her thigh was pressed alongside his.
“That was Lawson.”
His spirits sank. “Really? Is there something wrong with the gig on Friday?”
She grinned. “No! He and Luther were listening during our rehearsal, and they like us so much they want to add us to the show on Saturday.”
“What? Shit! There are two kickass death metal bands playing on Saturday, along with one of Law and Luther’s favorites from Felix. We’re just starting out – we’re not that calibre. We’re also not quite heavy enough to be considered death metal, at least not with Saya singing with me. We’re more...dark metal. Or BDSM metal, if there is such a thing.”
Winter skewered stir fry onto her fork, then put it in her mouth and chewed, a crease forming between her brows. After she swallowed, she nodded. “I know. I keep going back and forth about that in my head. I mean, our first real show is Friday night and we don’t even know if it’ll be well attended. We’re nobodies. To get thrown into such a big show the next night seems like we’re skipping a few steps, right?”
He took a bite of his own food and realized he’d gone too heavy on the soy sauce. Oh well, that’s what he got for winging it. “Yeah, it does. But you know what? The guys have seen a lot of bands come through there. They like us, sure, but they’re businessmen. If they didn’t think we were good enough to be in the show, they wouldn’t have asked. Did a group bale on him last minute?”
“No. He just said we’re good and that it would be an opportunity to be seen by fans of the other bands that will be there.”
“More exposure is better, but we have to make sure we don’t look like douchecanoes.”
She shrugged and they ate for a while, with only the occasional distant moo from one of Malachi’s new cows breaking the silence.
“I think we can avoid that. The worst that can happen is we get booed off the stage. Lawson knows what he’s doing, I think. If our Friday show sucks, we can back out. It’s too late to put us on the posters anyway, so no one knows we’re performing except the two of them, which is good because someone hasn’t designed the fucking Kink Monsters’ logo yet.”
Mack leaned back, full. He eyed her speculatively. “How does Law have your cell number, anyway? I thought Ramsay was our contact guy with Sprawl.”
“He asked for my number a few days ago.” Her smile was mysterious.
A hot irritation roiled. Guys were always trying to get Winter’s number, but she didn’t generally give it out. What the hell?
“What? You want me to fuck your boyfriend, and suddenly you’re the jealous type again?”
He studied her expression. She was messing with him. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“You sucked his dick. He’s not just a buddy anymore.”
Mack grunted, not wanting to think through an answer to that. “We both have to agree on a person for it not to be cheating. Law is off limits. So is Luther.”
She smirked. “You don’t like them like that?”
“I don’t want you to like them like that.” Wild hair, piercings, covered in tattoos – they were the perfect guys for Winter. Like a match made in purgatory. With Ramsay things were safe. She wasn’t that interested in him, so he wasn’t much of a threat. If she fucked him it would partially be because Mack wanted her to. Besides, it would be silly to make Ramsay off limits if he’d already been with him.
And it would be hot to watch.
“What if I do?” Winter’s expression was mocking.
There were times where Mack wished he could call Ramsay to come over and spank her a little. Cocky girl.
Before he could stop himself, his hand darted out and he caught Winter’s nipple between his knuckles and squeezed hard.
She gasped and started to pant when he increased pressure and didn’t let go.
“Are we piercing these again tonight?”
Winter’s laugh came from deep down, sexy more than amused. “Sounds like fun.”
He kissed her possessively and eased his grip.
When she pulled away, she gave him a slow smile. “I gave Law my number because Ramsay couldn’t find his cell for a few days, remember?” She sipped at her tea, then put it back on the table. “I don’t want Law or Luther, Mack Vincent. I don’t want anyone but you...and maybe Saya.” She leaned into him and licked along his bottom lip. “Besides, I think they’re totally vanilla. It’s depressing.”