Page 40 of Cross To Bear

Maybe not ever.

“What do we want, Maddie?” Bjorn asked, sitting down at the table and then leaning forward. “You tell us what you think we’re offering.”

“More…” I liked the sound of that word on her lips, able to imagine her saying it in so many contexts. But she straightened up, unconsciously leaning towards Crash. “More of what happened last night?”

“And what did you like about what we did?” I prompted. “That’s why we’re here.” I looked around me at the chaos. “Away from temptation, in a place so fucking loud, no one can hear what we’re talking about. Tell us how it was for you, so we can work out what to do next.”

“I…” Her cheeks took on this cute pink glow when she was embarrassed and I watched her eyes flick around the bar, to reassure herself no one could hear. She leaned in anyway, just in case. “I liked being looked after.” That I already knew, which was fucking perfect because we wanted to lavish every care upon her. “I liked that you knew what I needed, and I didn’t have to ask.”

“So that is the hard part then,” I said. “Because we’ve got to know. If we do this, if that’s what you want, we have to know how far to take things with you. You already shared some things that you like and dislike in bed, and you need to be clear about your limits with us.”

“Can’t we just…” She waved her hand around vaguely. “Work that out as we go along?”

“OK, so let me run a scenario past you then.” I leaned in and so did the other two. “We’ve got an office tucked away at the back, one with a lock on the door that only we’ve got the key to. We could take your hand, pull you after us and into that room and then the four of us…”

I had to catch my breath, claw back some impartiality, because while we’d cast a spell over her the other night, she’d done the same to us. Right now, she was breathing too fast, chest heaving and eyes glittering with a kind of energy I had to watch slowly die each day she was with Jesse. She looked alive. But all of that beautiful light inside her could be dimmed or worse, snuffed out if we did the wrong thing.

“We could move closer, put you between the lot of us. Our hands would slide over all that beautiful skin. You could end up stripped bare and put on all fours on our desk and we’d just stare.” So far, so fucking good. Maddie was into this, her scent like a silken rope, tugging me closer. “Not for long though. We’d have to touch you, Maddie. We wouldn’t be able to stop.”

Crash let out a low groan, turning his whole body towards her, blocking the sight of her from his side of the bar.

“Hands all over your body,” I continued. “Running up your thighs, across your back, down your arms. Fingers tracing the swells of your breasts in lazy circles before clamping down on your nipples. Others sliding up higher, higher up your thighs, until they find that wet little secret between your legs. Fingers pinching your clit.” A little jolt then, as if she could feel exactly what I was describing and it was unsettling. “Pushing inside you. Hooking upwards to graze against that spot over and over, getting you ready to take all of us, while another set traces the shape of your arsehole.”

That, that was what I was looking for. I noted the way she stiffened instantly, because the body always knows. We ignore its frantic messages, but it remembers pain, discomfort.

“What was that?” I asked her. “Maddie, look at me.” She did just that, staring into my eyes, arousal and discomfort uncomfortable bedfellows. “What was that? You were into the idea and then you weren’t.”

Her lips worked because she wanted to answer me. She wanted to do a whole lot of things I had in mind for her, I was sure, but this is when the war between arousal and embarrassment was one and it wouldn’t be arousal that won. Her lips thinned and her jaw muscle flexed as she grabbed her beer from the table and took a long drink.

“If I… we don’t know what you don’t like, we’ll end up making you uncomfortable or worse, hurting you. That’s what this is about. It’ll look like we’re in control, but really, you will be. Everything you want and nothing you don’t like and—”

“Jesse and I tried anal and…” Her thumb worried the dampening label on the bottle. “It hurt. Everything was OK during the foreplay stage. More than OK.” Her blush deepened. “Then he was ready, and he said he’d be gentle, but if he was, it still really fucking hurt, and I… I made him stop, and then he took off in a sulk.” She stared into my eyes, and I saw the challenge there. “He said it was his deepest fantasy, to do… that with me and I… ruined it.”

I saw the moment I punched Jesse right then in my mind, feeling the moment my fist drove into his jaw with a crack that was satisfying even now. But he was damn lucky I didn’t know about this little detail beforehand.

That we didn’t.

The vibes around our table thickened and intensified. Hawk was holding his bottle so damn tight I was worried it was about to shatter. And me? I just drummed my claws on the table, focussing on my breathing until the fur stopped prickling across my skin.

“He went too fast.” Bjorn’s voice was hoarse as he forced himself forward, not the bear. “If it was feeling good and then it wasn’t, he didn’t take enough time. He was rushing things, trying to get what he wanted and too bad if that didn’t work for you.”

“Yeah.” She swilled her beer and then took another drink. “I worked that out after a bit of Googling. He wanted to try again once he was sick of sulking, but I shut him down hard.” Maddie seemed to see the lot of us for the first time, inspecting each of us closely. “I don’t like pain. Put that in your little Christian Grey playbook.”

“Who the fuck is Christian Grey?” Crash muttered.

“That bloke from the BDSM movie all the women were watching for a while,” I explained.

“Because that’s what this is, right?” Maddie had recovered, hard, her demeanour changing completely. “You’re gonna run down some list in your head, work out if I want light or heavy impact play, whether I’m into fisting or pee play.”

“I really hope you’re not into fisting.” Crash looked at his massive hand, then forced a fist. “Because there ain’t no way you’re taking this. If you want to indulge in a little girl on girl action, that might work.”

“No.”

That was it, the thing I wanted to hear. Crisp, clear, a hard boundary put in place. Maddie had a voice, and she knew how to use it, but sometimes she just didn’t. That made what we were thinking dangerous, because we had to rely on her to speak up, verbally, physically, something to indicate things were not going well for her so we could fucking stop before she was ever hurt again.

“I don’t want that,” she continued. “That’s never been my thing, and if you want—”

“We just want you.” Her focus jerked sideways to where Hawk had settled on the bench seat beside her. “Just you.”

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