“For you,” Neil said when he returned. He handed me an ice-cold bottled water, and I leaned up on my elbows to gulp it down.
“One for you,” he said, and tossed another bottle to Emir. Neil also carried our small first aid kit. He sat beside me on the bed and popped the plastic latches. He withdrew some Tegaderm film—a fun little bandage we’d learned about during his chemotherapy two years before—and some first aid ointment. Emir stretched out beside me on the bed while Neil tended to the cuts inflicted by the cane, and when I was properly tended and cared for, Neil joined us.
The intimacy of the evening had been dizzying. Now, the three of us needed some recovery. Neil lay before me, our legs threaded together, his forehead resting against mine. Emir spooned me, his strong arm lying across my waist while the other arched over my head so his hand could find Neil’s. We dozed together that way, warm and clean and naked, communicating our feelings for each other through lazy touches and languorous kisses as we drifted in and out of slumber. Hours later, Emir rolled to his back and sighed. “I should go. It’s late, and I have a very long day tomorrow.”
I made a disappointed mewl, but I couldn’t be greedy. I hadn’t even expected to see him tonight. “At least come back to the house and have something to eat. We have leftovers.”
“We always have leftovers,” Neil said with a roll of his eyes. “Our housekeeper cooks for a banquet every night, regardless of how many people we tell her to expect.”
We found our clothes—I took a comfy pair of fleece pants and a long-sleeved tee from the comfort room—and headed out to the car. Neil and Emir had apparently driven together from the house. Maybe that was when they’d talked about the new relationship dynamic. I’d been caught up in the sex, and I hadn’t given that part a thought with a clear head. It wasn’t so much that they had been alone together—I didn’t think Neil would have sex with Emir without telling me, because it was one of our rules—but it was disconcerting that they’d left me out of such an important conversation.
* * * *
When we walked through the kitchen door of the main house, we weren’t Leif, Chloe, and Emir, anymore, but Neil, Sophie, and El-Mudad. Just a married couple and their friend.
“What brings you to New York in January?” I asked him with a yawn as Neil went to the refrigerator and began pulling out food. As an aside, I added, “Get the coq au vin that was left over last night.”
“I already was, darling,” Neil answered, the placid domesticity of our interactions returning automatically. He was my master in the bedroom—and anywhere else we had sex—but we were a completely normal couple outside of it.
El-Mudad leaned his elbows on the counter, the fingers of his clasped hands laced together. “The benefit, of course.”
“Neil’s benefit?” I asked, looking between the two of them. “For the center?”
Neil had come up with the idea for the Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center in the fall, but it was set to open at the end of the month. Neil had been so gung ho about the project that he’d sunk a ton of our money into it to get it off the ground faster than a project that size could conceivably take off. The facility itself was paid for, from the renovation of the building to the purchase of every last office supply, but we wanted it to run on its own steam. Hence the black tie gala we were holding on Saturday night.
“Yes, I heard about your dire financial situation,” El-Mudad teased.
“Oh, the gossip mill.” I laughed. It had apparently been news when Neil had slipped from tenth richest Brit to twelfth, because it indicated some dire state of affairs for him. What nobody bothered to acknowledge about the situation was the
fact eleven and twelve both became richer than us. It had nothing to do with losing money, but everyone seemed to be talking about how Neil’s misguided philanthropy was bankrupting us.
“El-Mudad is making a very generous donation,” Neil said, winking at him.
“Isn’t that kind of high profile?” I asked, looking between the two of them. El-Mudad had been very careful to not link us in public, due to the custody situation between himself and his ex-wife. She’d known about his sexual involvement with us, and Emir had feared that the details might be made public if she felt it gave her leverage.
I didn’t mind the secrecy, myself. My mother had recently moved into our guesthouse. She was just starting to get used to the idea of Neil and I as a couple, despite our twenty-four-year age difference, and she’d been surprisingly cool about the revelation that Neil and I were both bisexual. But I didn’t want her to know that my husband and I had a lover with whom we engaged in super-hot three-ways.
Especially since, as time went on, the three of us were becoming more and more emotionally entangled.
We needed to clear some of those details up.
“Hey, can we have a little three-way pals roundtable discussion here?” I asked, and both of them stopped what they were doing. Whenever we’d talked about our sexual arrangements before, it had been about limits and personal policies and preferences. In our private relations with each other, we’d been cordial.
“Certainly,” El-Mudad agreed. “Shall we move to the actual round table?” He grinned and pointed to the one near the huge arched windows that showed a spectacular view of the Atlantic Ocean during the day.
“Let me heat this up, first,” Neil said, popping the covered ceramic dish into the microwave.
“I just wanted to discuss this whole monogamy thing you two apparently had a conversation about before I got here.” That didn’t quite sit right with me, that they had discussed our relationship without me being present. I’d just been too horny to realize it at the time. “First of all, don’t do that again.”
“If that’s your wish,” El-Mudad said easily.
Neil gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. You’re right, that crossed a line. I spoke for you as a part of our marital unit, rather than letting you participate in the conversation as an individual. I won’t do it again.”
“Good.” That eased some of the tension I’d been holding in my shoulders. “Look, I’m going to be straight up. El-Mudad, you are so important to both of us—” I broke off to reach for his hand, and he took mine, covering it with his. I went on, “But I just learned this totally new, awesome thing about my own sexuality. And I don’t want to limit myself to dudes.”
“I would never want you to consider yourself limited,” he told me with a reassuring squeeze of his fingers. “But I’m tired of being free. I would like to see only the two of you. What you do on your own, I will accept.”
“But what about safety?” Neil asked. “I trust you, and Sophie has made it clear that she trusts you. But I would never want you to feel that we would put you in any danger—”