Solstice (Midsummer #3)

4. Ivy

4

Ivy

F or forty-eight hours, Lex and I dissolved into wicked debauchery. He wanted to hold me down and remind me who I belonged to, who I had always belonged to, and Lord help me, I couldn’t find it in me to stop him.

Lex had a way of being infuriatingly right about everything.

I’d wanted the fight. He understood this side of me like no one else could. With Carter, there was no competition. He liked to submit to me as much as I liked to submit to him. I was the more dominant one with Miri, which suited both of us. But Lex was the only person in the world I could lose to, I liked to lose to—only in private. To the outside world, we had agreed it was business as usual. I had a reputation to uphold, after all. Our two days alone passed far too quickly, and Lex had a lot of time to make up for.

“I caught you,” Lex hissed, circling the table.

He did.

My heart raced, and my skin tingled where the rope dug into my wrists and ankles.

“I told you if I caught you, I’d make you pay.”

He did that, too.

“And now you’re blindfolded and tied to my dining room table with a gag in your mouth and a plug in your ass.”

Yep. Sure am.

I let out a pretend groan of frustration, my muscles clenching around the metal in my butt.

He tsked. “You should have run faster.”

Huffing out a sigh, I ground my teeth deeper into the gag. If I could see him, I’d shoot daggers out of my eyes. But no, the first thing he’d done after catching me in the woods was blindfold me. After he’d secured my hands and feet, he made me admit he’d won and slung me over his shoulders like a deer, carrying me back inside.

Now I was strung up wearing only a thong and restrained on a table in the kitchen. Deprived of most of my other senses, my hearing had elevated to painful levels, and I had become aware of every inch of exposed skin.

“Say mercy?” He clenched his hand around my thigh, slowly dragging it higher to my throbbing, wet cunt. I loved this part of our play the most: how often he checked in on me, how often he leaped into my mind to make sure I was still into whatever mayhem he’d unleashed.

“Fuck off, Lucifer.”

He laughed a sick, demented noise that had driven me to fury my whole life, but tires crunching on the snow in the driveway made both of us snap to attention.

“Who’s that?”

He stepped away from me, and our connection broke.

“Stay here,” he said. Then his footsteps disappeared toward the front of the house.

Stay here? STAY HERE? Like I could go anywhere else. Like I could say no. I yanked at the rope on my wrists.

“LLEEXXX,” I mumbled around the gag, but a distant, “Shut up,” made me groan in frustration and thud my head back against the table.

Who the hell could that be?

Carter wasn’t due for another twelve hours, Miri wasn’t supposed to come in until tomorrow morning, and Theo had promised not to return unless it was an emergency.

Had something happened?

I tried to slow my breathing so I could hear over the sound of my racing pulse. The front door opened and closed. Boots pounded on the floor as the intruder stomped off snow and salt. Lex murmured something low and inaudible, and then two sets of footsteps came closer, echoing off the hardwood. My heart rate picked up, and I froze in anticipation, my breaths coming in slow, deep inhales through my nose. Lex would only let one person with a heavy footfall see me like this.

“Wow,” Carter’s deep voice said, and I relaxed against the table, my head dropping between my outstretched arms. “Is this for me? DC, you big sap, you shouldn’t have.”

Lex hummed. “No, I caught her for me, but I suppose I could be talked into sharing.” He came to my left, and Carter stood to my right. I imagined them staring at each other over my naked body, debating which pieces they would tear off first. “If you drive the right bargain.”

Carter snickered. “My lucky day, huh? Production shut down. Caught an earlier flight. And now?” He whistled. “A member of Congress tied up and spread out in front of me. Oh, the things I could do for the good of America.”

It shouldn’t have turned me on as much as it did. I didn’t like how the public objectified me, and the thought of the two most important men in my life doing the same thing should have raised my hackles. Instead, the depraved nature of it plucked at a secret guitar string inside my freaky little soul. I vibrated with it.

My clit pulsed when there was a smack over my head, and Lex said, “No touching. You have to pay your dues.”

“What do you want, DC?”

Lex made a deep sound, and a tremble went through my body when chair legs scraped against the hardwood. It creaked as he sat in it, and Carter’s warmth radiated along the right side of my body, meaning he still stood next to me.

I ached to have this blindfold off. I wanted to see what they were doing. But the thrill of not knowing made me more excited, and I nearly jumped off the table when Lex put his hand on my ankle.

“Mercy?” he asked inside my head.

I shook my head and replied, “Never.”

Carter hadn’t been here when we negotiated terms. Not only that, but I’d made Lex promise we wouldn’t fight in front of the others. I was well within my rights to end this scene and devise a new one with our additional partner. But I’d already surrendered, and Carter had tied me up like this before. So be it.

“I want what I always want, Chicago. Give me a good show.”

Lex ran his hand up my thigh, gripping the spot right next to my pussy. So close yet so far away. I pushed into the touch, making both of them laugh.

“How long has she been like this?”

Lex hummed. “I’ve been edging her off and on for the better part of an hour.”

“An hour?” Carter blew out a breath. “That’s so mean.”

“She loves it.” Someone brushed hair out of my face with a gentle swipe of fingers, and I moaned an achy and desperate noise. “Don’t you, X?”

Carter cleared his throat, fabric rubbing against fabric, making me envision him taking off his jacket. The sound of the zipper next meant his hoodie, and then metal clinked.

His belt.

The whoosh of the leather through denim loops had me trying to push my thighs together, but it was impossible being spread out like this. I ached for sensation, throbbing in places I didn’t even know I had.

“A show, then?” Carter said, the floor creaking somewhere near my head. “What do you want to see?”

“Hmm…” The chair moved, Lex’s entire arm resting against my leg now. I pictured him with his legs spread wide, his head tilted to the side, hazel gaze narrowing on Carter. “Ivy’s worked so hard to win this election.”

“I know.”

“But she still won’t admit how much she loves me.”

Carter laughed. Fucking. Laughed. The jerk! I huffed a belligerent sigh through my nose.

I didn’t love Lex, or maybe I didn’t think I did. Maybe it was all so confusing and complicated, I didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe I’d been saying I didn’t for so long that the response came as a habit.

“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” Lex blew out a breath, annoyed with my reluctance. “Twenty-six years together, and I have to chase her through the fucking woods to get her to pay any attention to me.”

“You poor thing.” Carter’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “You must be so neglected.”

“You know what I think, Chicago?”

“What’s that, DC?”

“I think X is so in love with me, she can’t even stand it.”

Carter chuckled again. “You might be right about that.”

“I do know this.” I heard Lex stand and walk around my legs, footsteps ending next to Carter near my head. “She’s been in love with you since the moment she met you.”

Carter hummed in agreement.

“I’d like to see how X responds to a man she loves when she’s tied down. You know, for purely educational purposes.”

“Right,” Carter said.

“So next time, I’ll see the signs for myself.”

Next time?

I shivered at the notion.

I knew how this looked. Me, a strong, powerful woman, giving in to the baser desires of two men, giving them complete control over my body, letting them treat me like an object rather than a person.

But there existed peace in submission, a certain calm in giving up control, in not having to plan or coerce or strategize for however long your playmate could keep up. Which, in Lex’s case, was as long as me. We’d been playing this game in some shape or form all our lives.

My beloved Mister Scott being here had upped the ante. The thought of both of them together sent anticipation through every nerve ending. Carter’s gentleness contrasted with Lex’s roughness, and all of that focused on me usually rocked my world. I never wanted to get up from this table.

“The thing about our Representative Washington is that”—Carter moved to stand between my bent legs, his hands landing on top of my thighs—“you gotta make her trust you first.”

I sighed at the contact, relishing the familiar palms and the ridges of his scars. His vow.

“Hmm.” Lex sounded like someone learning about calculus or astrophysics, like the thought of me trusting him was too complex or time-consuming. “How do you do that?”

Carter huffed a breath, tucking his fingers under the waistband of my thong, dragging it down over my knees so it hung around my ankles. “Patience.”

“Show me.”

Carter slid his hands over my waist, up my ribs to my breasts, cupping each one before cascading back down again and stopping at my hips. The denim of his jeans rubbed up against the insides of my thighs, the heat from his body radiating into me as he leaned over my body, connecting us skin to skin.

“Hello, Weeds,” he said, finally addressing me. He dug his teeth into my ear and pulled, sending shivers down my neck and shoulders. I trembled, and he laughed. “He’s been torturing you for a long time, huh?”

I whined and nodded, playing the poor, pathetic prisoner.

“Does it hurt?”

I nodded again.

“Want me to kiss it better?”

Good God, the hot spike that went through my lower belly should have been criminal. I nodded again.

“That’s what I thought.” He found my aching cunt with his fingers, massaging in just the right spots. I arched into the touch as his warm, wet mouth trailed down the center of my body, leaving cool air in its wake. When his lips rounded my clit, I bucked into him, the sensation at once too powerful and not strong enough.

Lex had worked me into a frenzy more times than I could count, only to smack my cunt or scratch me across the boobs to break my concentration. He loved to see me frustrated, and what had once been a childhood obsession with needling me had turned into a full-blown fixation. Lex was now the master of every ounce of my pain. He owned it, he controlled it, and I gave it to him because I could no longer hold it in by myself.

Now he let Carter have a piece of it. Carter, who’d only ever cared for the tender parts of me, who’d corrupted every part of my innocence with his wicked words and wild imagination. He surged his fingers inside, hitting all the right parts to make me sag into it. I moaned, and he sucked harder, faster, working me like he’d worked me for years.

Euphoria erupted in my brain, skating down my spine like decadent venom, burning and furious and amazing in its intensity. Just when I was about to climax, Lex shouted, “Stop,” and Carter tore his mouth away from me with a loud smack.

Agony engulfed my molecules. I sobbed and yanked at the restraints, my knees desperate to close so my thighs could rub at my most needy parts.

I hate him more than I ever did.

“That’s not yours to claim, Chicago.” Lex’s footsteps moved to the other side, next to his buddy, our husband. Carter huffed and stepped away. “I am sorry I worked you up for nothing.” Lex clamped his fingers around the tops of my thighs as he took Carter’s place. “This is between me and her, you see.” Carter moved closer to my head. “Why don’t you take that gag out of her mouth and use something else to keep her quiet?”

A sick delight went through me at the thought of where this was headed. Carter’s cock in my mouth and Lex’s in my cunt.

Fuck.

There had been times in our long four years together when I’d been alone with the two of them. If Lex and I happened to fuck while we were with our spouses, it was only because of them. Never because of us. But this?

This was very much about me and him and the naughty, exhausting thing between us. For years, we’d been trying to stifle it. What we should have done was let it burn. I understood that now.

Carter tugged at the buckle on the gag, unlocking it so he could pull it off my face. I stretched my jaw and swallowed a few times, my tongue raw and dry.

“Blindfold, too?” Carter said, hope in his tone.

“Hmm.” Lex sounded unsure.

“C’mon.” Carter chuckled. “You know I love those watery gray eyes looking up at me while she’s choking me down.”

Lex let out a defeated sigh. “Be my guest. How could I deny you anything?”

The fabric tore away, and I squinted into the low, flickering light. It was dark, but Lex had lit a ton of candles, the blue of Carter’s kind eyes shimmering against the flames. I let out a pleased sigh, turning my hand into his touch when he cupped my cheek and leaned down to give me a tender kiss.

“Hello, Mister Scott,” I said.

“Hello, Miss Washington.” Another soft kiss sent a jolt right down my center, but Lex quickly silenced that with a firm thwack against my pussy. I gasped and arched into the sharp zap ricocheting up my body.

“I told you to keep her quiet, Chicago.” Lex dragged his nails down the insides of my legs in a painful scratch, and I squealed, trying to get away from him. “If you can’t do as you’re told, you can get the fuck out of my scene.”

Carter tucked his bottom lip between his teeth and eyed our husband with a wicked glare, like Lex making commands simultaneously turned him on and pissed him off. This was hardly the first time he had bossed us around in bed, but it was usually accompanied by some sweet and hilarious antidote from Carter, making Lex blush or break character. Now, he wilted in his submission as much as I did.

“You got it, DC,” Carter said.

My excitement amplified at the sound of Carter’s zipper and the sight of him reaching into his pants to pull out his big, beautiful dick.

Shaking harder, I licked my lips and opened wide.

Carter shut me up.