And as much as I wanted to protest that that wasn’t me, I wasn’t doing that, I was. I was sitting at home, waiting for him to come back to me. To tell Maddie to take control of her own future when I couldn’t do the same was hypocritical.

  By the time I’d made my decision, I was breathing hard and my palms were sweating.

  I sat in the car, staring out at the dark street, for long minutes. Then pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed his number.

  “Hello? Jesse?”

  “Yeah,” I said, then cleared my throat. “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I want you to come home, Will.”

  “Jess—”

  “No, I’m serious. It’s been nearly two weeks. If you’re not home by the end of the week, then I’m leaving. I’ll go, Will, and you won’t know where to find me.”

  He was quiet for longer than I expected. I could hear his breathing through the phone.

  “Okay,” he said eventually. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Chapter 11

  I wanted to make it up to Laura for my outburst, but more than that, I wanted to spend time with her again. Our lives had moved on so much from when I was so totally innocent to the entire BDSM scene; she had been the one to take me under her wing and gently show me what I needed to know.

  With the developments in both our lives, we hadn’t exactly grown apart, but the amount of time we had free to spend together had been reduced. She was pretty much my only friend who knew all sides of me. I’d confided in her about the tangled mess that was my mother, and she had been there for me through all the ups and downs I’d had with Will. And she was calm and steady enough to be around my vanilla friends too without me having to worry that she would let something slip.

  Will’s job still required him to work late some nights, and these were the best ones for me to go over and hang out with the McAlder family.

  For the length of time that I’d known them, all it took was a quick phone call to let them know that I was on my way and they were fairly happy for me to turn up almost unannounced. By the time I’d finished work and driven across town, the girls had eaten their dinner and were in the bath.

  “Hey,” Laura said as she answered the door, then pulled me into a tight embrace.

  “How are you?” I asked as we held on to each other.

  “Not bad,” she whispered. “You?”

  “Better.”

  That was all either of us needed.

  Steven too had picked up a few clients who needed physio treatments later in the day, so he wasn’t home either. It was quiet in the house apart from the sounds of two girls splashing in the bath upstairs, Maddie murmuring to them from time to time, and the low music coming from a radio in the kitchen.

  Laura made tea, and I settled into one of the big armchairs in their family room.

  “So,” she said, and gave me a wicked grin. “How’s your sex life?”

  I blushed and laughed. Then sighed. “Me and my hand are very happy together, thank you.”

  “Still not getting any?”

  “We’re going to try and rebuild things at our own pace. It makes sense, you know. Will had a fairly big emotional breakdown. He needs time to work things out and not rush into something he’s not ready for.”

  “And you? What about what you need, Jess?”

  “I need my Dom,” I said, because I knew admitting it would help. “But I also need my boyfriend. And I need my best friend too. It might take a while to fix all of those sides of him, but we’re trying. We’ll get there. It’s just taking a while.”

  As she nodded in agreement, the rumbling sound of two small people racing down the stairs reached us. Familiar with the two people in question, I moved my mug of tea and braced myself.

  Moments later I found myself with Carrigan and Sawyer in my lap, laughing and talking at me a mile a minute. They were undeniably beautiful children, having inherited their mother’s striking hair color and their father’s good bone structure. Maddie had followed them downstairs at a slightly more sedate pace, the round curve of her pregnancy now pushing the rest of her clothing aside. She gave me a slightly shy smile, kissed Laura on the cheek, and excused herself to her room.

  The kids were allowed to put on a movie to watch before bedtime, giving me time to talk to Laura about the more vanilla aspects of our lives and learn a little more about their unusual three-way relationship.

  I’d always wondered how much Carrigan and Sawyer picked up on the fact that their mother was essentially having two relationships, one with their father and another with the woman they saw as their nanny. Then again, they had their own version of “normal” in their household, so it probably didn’t trouble them at all.

  I was pulled out of my thoughts by one of the twins—on closer inspection I decided it was Sawyer—pulling at my sleeve.

  “Would you read us a bedtime story?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Sure,” I told her.

  “And can you braid hair?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  Sawyer huffed but turned to her mother to have her hair fixed for bed. Over her daughter’s head, Laura laughed silently as she managed to do a ridiculously complicated spiral that looked almost like a halo when it was done.

  “Go brush your teeth, please,” she said softly.

  I waited for the tantrum, but Sawyer just kissed her mother’s cheek and complied. I must have been gaping, because Laura rolled her eyes at me.

  “Don’t worry. The other one fusses enough for them both.”

  As promised, it took Laura several minutes of good old-fashioned threats, bribery, and blackmail before Carrigan would get ready for bed. I followed them upstairs and stayed out of the argument about what book I got to read to them.

  Spending time with Laura’s kids was an eye-opener for me. Although when I was younger, there were always plenty of other children around to play with, only a few of my friends had taken the scary steps into parenthood. My babysitting skills left plenty to be desired, but my story-reading skills were, apparently, sufficient.

  On my way out of the twins’ room (story finished, twins almost asleep), I noticed Maddie’s door was open wide enough to clearly be an invitation. She was lying on her bed, propped up on a few pillows and sketching in a huge notebook resting on her softly swelling belly.

  I stopped and leaned against the doorframe. “Hey,” I said softly, not wanting to disturb her.

  She smiled but didn’t look at me, then pulled her headphones from her ears. “Hey,” she said back. “You have a very nice reading voice.”

  “Thanks,” I laughed. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”

  “It’s okay. Steven usually does all the voices to whatever he’s reading. It tends to get quite loud.”

  I hovered for another moment, and she gestured me in.

  Her room was furnished incredibly simply. A large iron-framed bed dominated much of the space, and she kept it piled high with cream-colored pillows in a variety of patterns and styles. Other than the bed, the only furniture in the room was an oversized chest of drawers that looked like it was probably an antique.

  I couldn’t help but wonder about the impermanence of the space. She clearly had taken the smallest bedroom in the house so the twins could share the larger room, and although there was a fourth guest room down the hall that could possibly serve as a nursery, there was barely enough room in her own bedroom for a baby as well. To me, it seemed like she was almost ready to pack up and leave, but I hadn’t seen Maddie in her own environment enough to be able to make a judgment.

  “What are you working on?” I asked as I took a seat at the edge of her bed.

  She smiled and turned the sketchbook around. I couldn’t say that I quite understood her drawing; in it I could find my own face, and the twins, but we were surrounded by a chaos that maybe only she understood.

  “I could hear you,” she said, probably sensing my confusion, “but I couldn’t see you. I suppose it’s representative of what you could have been doing.”

  “Do you do this for a living?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” Maddie said, turning the sketchbook back toward herself. “I went to art school, but I work part-time for an independent architect. I don’t really get to do any of my own work any more.”

  “Except what you do for yourself.”

  “Right.”

  I reached for her hand, suddenly feeling like I was getting an insight into this permanently distant woman. “Maddie.”

  She looked up at me.

  “What are we going to do?”

  She laughed once and cast her eyes back down again. “Right now, Jesse, I have no idea.”

  “No one will force you into making any decisions, you know that, right?”

  “Don’t you ever—” she started impulsively, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you ever wish that he’d make all the decisions for you? Take all the chance of failure out of your hands?”

  Well, fuck me. “No,” I said gently. “Will and I work because we’re equals in our relationship. Even when we fight, it never comes down to holding our D/s roles as the bottom line. I mean, he doesn’t ever try to dismiss my feelings or invalidate my opinion just because he’s the Dom and ‘always right’.”

  I made little air quotations and she laughed.

  “What if Laura always is right?”

  “She’s not,” I said. “She was my Domme for a long time, remember? I know her as a friend as well as a Domme, and she’s not infallible, Maddie. She makes mistakes just like the rest of us.”

  “Letting me have sex with her husband was a mistake.”

  “It’s only a mistake if you let it be that way,” I said. “There’s no reason for you all not to make the best of this situation. It wasn’t planned, sure, but look at how well loved Carrigan and Sawyer are. Your baby can have that too.”

  “You and Will could give that to them,” she said with a hint of desperation. “You and Will would be fantastic parents.”

  “So will you,” I said. “You’ve got time yet. There’s no need to make a decision tonight… I actually know a pretty good shrink if you need some guidance.”

  Her smile, this time, was genuine. “That could be a good idea, you know.”

  “I’m full of them.” I stood and leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. “You know where I am if you ever need to talk.”

  “Thanks, Jesse.”

  Back downstairs, Laura was in the same chair with her feet tucked up under her legs.

  “If you were reading them Go The Fuck To Sleep, I’ll kick your ass,” she said lightly.

  “I was talking to Maddie.”

  She turned and studied me from her chair. “Oh?”

  “She seems very vulnerable.” I didn’t want to leave that statement hanging, so I took a seat on the arm of the couch.

  Laura sighed. “If that’s your way of telling me I’m a terrible Domme, then it’s rather more subtle than Will’s.”

  “I don’t think you’re a terrible Domme. And neither does Will. We wouldn’t keep running to you for help if we really thought that.”

  “I can’t give her what she needs.”

  Raising my eyebrows, I studied the woman I once considered infallible. “If I can be blunt with you, Laura, Will isn’t giving me what I need right now either. Does that make him a terrible Dom?”

  “Don’t try and be clever, Jesse. It doesn’t suit you.”

  I laughed and sank to my knees in front of her, resting my head on her thigh. This was familiar territory for me, even after all these years.

  “You’ll work something out,” I said confidently as she started to absently play with the ends of my hair. “The answer might not be obvious right now, but you’ve made the current situation work for your family as it is at the moment. Whatever is right for this baby will happen too.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “For all of our sakes.”

  I was on the couch with my laptop when I heard his key in the door. I felt physically sick, despite the fact that I’d barely eaten all day.

  His bag made a soft thud when he dropped it to the floor in the hallway. Then he appeared in the door, still wearing his jacket. He looked like shit, which made me feel better.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  “Hey,” I said back.

  We looked at each other for long moments, and I wondered how I thought I could ever stop loving him.

  “I, uh,” I started. “I made up the bed in the spare room. I don’t mind sleeping in there if you don’t want to.”

  I wasn’t sure how to read his reaction. He nodded slowly.

  “It’s fine. I’ll take it.”

  His fingers moved to the buttons of his jacket and unthreaded them as he turned back to the hall. He came back with his bag.

  “Is everything, still—I mean, is my stuff….”

  “I haven’t touched any of it,” I said, somewhat defensively. “The laundry basket is empty if you need to wash anything.”

  “I don’t. I’ll just go put this away.”

  Will was gone for about fifteen minutes, a reasonable amount of time to unpack and maybe use the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush. When he came back, he’d changed into jogging pants and a T-shirt, maybe to show me that he didn’t intend to leave again. For a moment I wondered if he had any intention of talking to me about why he’d left, or if there was anything left to salvage of our relationship.

  The thought of losing him was breaking me apart inside.

  But I was the one who told him to come home, and he had, so maybe it was my place to start putting things on track again.

  I closed my laptop and stood up, stretching, then crossed to him.

  From only feet away, he looked worse and smelled amazing. Like Will. He smelled like Will and home. But there were dark shadows under his faintly bloodshot eyes, and his skin was sallow and pale.

  I stepped closer to him. He didn’t move away.

  In fact, he stepped closer to me, his eyes asking for permission. I nodded—a tiny, tiny movement of my head.

  The distance between us was closed in the space of a breath, and his lips skimmed mine as his hand cupped my cheek. Slowly, carefully, warm lips on warm lips and the taste of his breath in my mouth. The ache of missing him exploded in my chest.

  I opened my mouth and welcomed him in.

  He kissed me with the sureness of the man I loved and the tentative care of someone who was still scared of hurting me.

  His tongue stole out and licked against mine. I flicked mine back into his mouth and placed my hands carefully on his hips.

  Again and again he kissed me, taking me deeper every time as my heart pounded and fear rushed through my blood instead of oxygen.

  Gently, I pressed my hands against his chest and stepped back.

  I knew how it would end, otherwise. The fantasy flashed through my mind fully formed—naked on my back on the rug, legs spread, him deep inside me as friction burns bloomed across my shoulders and ass. That wasn’t right. Not yet. We couldn’t go there yet.

  He seemed to know that too.

  “Good night, Jesse,” he said in a rough voice.

  “Night,” I echoed.

  In bed that night, I was restless, unable to settle. All I could think of was the man in bed across the hall from me. He might have been home, but he was still miles away.

  I imagined him naked, hand curling around his bare cock, how his back would arch from the bed as he came. I couldn’t bring myself to join him.

  It was only nine thirty when I turned my lights out. But I didn’t see him again until morning.

  I found myself getting up even earlier than normal, showering and dressing quickly, packing my bag with what I’d need for the day, and then searching out coffee from the kitchen. When Will joined me, he looked surprised to see me up so early but made no comment. I fixed him a coffee and my own in my travel mug, and we murmured our good mornings.

  “I’m not due back to work until next week,” he said, his hands curling around his mug. He still wore pajama bottoms and a T-shirt.

  “Okay,” I said, nodding. “I should be home normal time.”

  I left him, silent and pensive, in the kitchen.

  The day passed slowly. I had caught up with the work I’d missed from when I’d been off from the car accident, worked through everything that was due to things that weren’t needed until weeks from now. This distraction, the work-work-work, was what I’d needed while Will had been gone. Now I was forced to chip in with my coworkers and help out on their projects. Photocopying and faxing were not good tasks for distracting my brain.

  When five o’clock finally rolled around, I felt sick. There was no hiding any more. I had been the one to call him home, so surely it was my responsibility to get us talking again? Although we’d already done more than talk.

  The memory of his kiss still burned on my lips.

  By the time I reached the front door, I had worked myself up into a real state. The smell of something delicious distracted me, though.

  “Will?” I called as I closed the door behind me and toed off my shoes.

  “In here.” His voice carried from the kitchen. I followed it.

  He wore a Kiss the Cook apron tied around his waist, and a white shirt. His hair was a mess. It needed cutting. He smiled tentatively when he saw me and moved to step in close, to kiss me, I guessed, as was our routine. Our old routine.

  But he caught himself in time and stepped back instead.

  “You can touch me, you know,” I bit out.

  “Can I?” he asked. The question annoyed me even more.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  This time he did step into my personal space. Curled his hand around my cheek and brushed his lips over mine.

  It was a bad idea. The sweet, chaste kiss sent my heart flying into my throat and tears pricking at my eyes. He stepped back again before things could get heated.

  “Did you cook?” I asked, ignoring the roughness of my voice.

  “Yeah. A chili. Do you want some?”