Initiative (Suncoast Society #31)(18)

How do we heal her heart after a loss like this?

He didn’t know, but he damn sure suspected there would be a talk with Seth in their near future. If anyone knew about love and loss, it was that man. Seth would be able to tell them if it’d be appropriate for them to have Susie talk with Leah, who’d actually been through it on the widow end.

Although what few details they’d heard about Susie’s husband’s death, it sounded like Susie had lost her husband in an accident, while Leah and Seth had time to prepare themselves for the sad inevitable ending.

Whatever they had to do, no matter what, Darryl knew they’d help her.

Whatever it took.





Chapter Six


After Darryl left, Grant rolled onto his side with Susie securely wrapped in his arms. She was finally starting to calm down a little, the worst of the tsunami of grief now dissipating. He wasn’t an idiot. Those weren’t the last tears she’d ever cry, but maybe with them as her safety valve she could finally start to heal instead of whatever stop-gap measures she’d slapped into place to try to survive day-by-day.

“We’re not leaving you, sweetheart,” he said. “I promise you. Never again. Not unless you tell us you want us to go.”

She almost seemed to want to burrow inside him, as tightly as she had her body molded against his. “It hurts so bad,” she softly moaned.

“I know, sweetheart. You haven’t had anyone you could really talk about this with, did you?”

“No, Sir.”

“And for the record,” he slowly said, hoping this didn’t mess things up, “I’m not gay. I’m bi. Darryl’s…homoflexible, given the right circumstances. You are definitely the right circumstances.”

She finally looked up at him, her eyes red, nose puffy. “What?”

“When I saw your bracelet earlier, he and I talked when we came back to our room to change after dinner. I wasn’t sure if you had someone in your life and you didn’t want to say anything in front of us because you didn’t realize we were kinky, too. I needed to know for sure first.” He palmed her cheek. “We have two options, so you’ll need to tell me—”

“Yes.”

He had to press his lips together to keep from laughing. She wouldn’t understand that she’d just channeled Darryl’s earlier response so perfectly that it nearly broke his heart.

“You need to hear me out first, sweetheart,” he finally said when he knew he could get it out without laughing. “For starters, Darryl and I are a package deal. You need to be able to accept—”

“Yes.”

This time he couldn’t hold back the laughter. He pulled her close, feeling her tremble in his arms. “Are ya tryin’ to earn cane strokes?” he playfully teased.

“No, Sir,” she said, now sounding a little less sure of herself.

“Then may I please finish?”

“Sorry, Sir.”

Fuck. Despite the circumstances, he was now hard as a rock. Every time she said that phrase it turned his crank more than ever.

“The non-negotiable points are that you must accept being with both Darryl and me. You can’t play with or have sex with anyone else unless it’s agreed upon by all of us.”

At that she looked up. “You’d play with and have sex with other people?”

Warning alarms sounded in his brain. “Darryl and I have had threesomes before, yes.”

She looked so utterly heartbroken it nearly devastated him. “I…I mean, we never…Master never…” Renewed tears filled her eyes, her body suddenly tense, rigid in his arms.

He hoped he was interpreting her distress correctly. “If one of your hard limits is that it’s only the three of us and no one else, we’re fine with that. But it goes both ways. It means the three of us are monogamous with each other, no outside partners. Play or sex.”

Hell, that wasn’t a sacrifice at all, not with her.

She immediately relaxed, nodding.

He forced her to look up at him again. “Let’s start with your hard limits.”

She sucked in a ragged breath. “Just…that. No one else. Just you two.”

He forced a smile. “Don’t pull the ‘no-limits slave’ bullshit on me,” he teased. “If I went after your eyeballs with a rusty grapefruit spoon, I would expect at least a struggle.”

Her face froze for a second before she finally laughed.

He pulled her into his arms again. “There’s my girl. That’s better. That’s a good sound.”

“If you try to tie me up upside down, I’ll throw up,” she said. “I can’t even do yoga positions where I have to be head-down.”

Now it was his turn to laugh. “Then let’s not do that,” he said. “What else?”

“I…I don’t know,” she finally said. “We never went out anywhere and saw anyone else…play. I don’t know what to tell you I don’t want to do. What else,” she added. “Other than I don’t want to share or be shared with anyone but you two.”

“That’s fine. What did you two used to do?”





Susie didn’t want to start crying again. Snot-sobbing—unless it was Grant’s fetish—wasn’t very sexy. “John used to like to tie me up and make me come,” she whispered, almost embarrassed to admit it, even to Grant.