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Lyda's beautiful face became expressionless. "Yes I did. He's yours."
The way the skin pulled tight over Lyda's cheekbones bugged Gen, but her fuzzy brain couldn't process that. Lyda's gaze shifted to Noah. "Take her home, Noah. Care for her properly. I'm done with you both for the night."
Noah began to say something, but Lyda put a quelling hand on his shoulder. "Do as I say. Take care of her. That's what she needs tonight. We'll deal with the rest later."
Chapter Ten
Done for the night. That described Gen as well. She wasn't aware of the ride home, though she didn't ever let go of Noah. She kept her arms wrapped around him while he drove, his own arm circling her as he stroked her hip. He even carried her to her front door, only letting her down to unlock and open her door. When he took her into her bedroom, he undressed her, his touch a misty memory of pleasant caresses. But her bedroom, her solitary place of retreat, to think and dream, to find her center, brought some sanity back to her.
"I want you to stay, but in the guestroom. Close, but not in here. Please..." She cleared her throat, looked up at him in the direct way Lyda did, so he knew it wasn't a request. "Don't come in unless I tell you to."
Her voice quavered, draining any real authority from it, but Noah simply nodded. Brushing a kiss over her forehead, he tugged on the oversized sleeve of the Snoopy nightshirt she'd wanted to wear. "I'll be close."
The need to feel in control was overriding the euphoria. Ordering him away from her, which was against what she was sure they both wanted, felt right. She had to be sure she still had a brain, a will of her own. The things she'd done tonight were beyond what she'd ever thought herself capable of wanting, let alone experiencing, yet she'd embraced so much of it. And she wanted more, even with no idea of what lay beyond the curtain, or the end destination. She wasn't the type who took the unmarked path.
Not anymore, because when she had been that kind of person, she'd always chosen the one that had the hidden sign screaming "path of sure self-destruction".
Sliding into the bed, she burrowed herself under the covers. Her gaze slid toward the nightstand, where she had a small vase of dried flowers and a little plaque she'd bought from a secondhand store. The simple mantra Be true to yourself was printed on it. Had she done that tonight?
Commanding Noah under Lyda's direction had been amazing, incredible. His responses, her own. Lyda, commanding both of them. I can't get enough. Gen remembered Noah quivering, just the way she had, when their Mistress had said that. Lyda's desire for them had been so clear, no conflict. So why was Gen now curled up in a ball, wishing Noah was here beside her and afraid to think too much about Lyda?
She couldn't succeed at a normal guy-girl relationship. She'd picked two wrong men. They'd reduced her to poverty, stripped her self-esteem, and made her doubt her ability to find love. She'd watched Marguerite, followed by Chloe, find an amazing man any woman would want. As a result, Gen had concluded finding love wasn't magic, no presto, I'm here. It was something certain people had mapped in their destiny, like DNA. The rest were doomed to spend their lives seeking it like a drug, exhibiting all the irrational behavior of addicts to get and keep it. Or they compromised themselves to have merely a shadow of it. The alternative was figuring out how to be happy and enough by yourself. She'd settled on that course, hence the plaque.
Why did she keep falling into the trap of thinking she could step back, treat this as a kinky, fun adventure, no harm done? She wasn't built that way.
Lyda represented the greater risk of the two. Elusive, remote and mesmerizing, she was fully capable of destroying Gen's heart. The more she wanted Lyda, the more frightened she was of wanting her. But she couldn't discount the peril of Noah. He'd stepped into her heart the first weekend and yet, as accessible as he seemed, he was as elusive to define, in terms of a relationship, as Lyda. Gen had no doubt the two came as a package. Even if they hadn't figured that out between them yet, she could see it, feel it, whenever she was around one or both of them.
Long and short, she was a vanilla girl who was in way over her head. Wrapping her arms around herself, she started rocking. She wasn't going to call Noah to do it. She had enough respect for herself and him not to use him that way. The decision made her resent her conscience like hell. It took a long while to fall asleep.
When she did, it was a sleep punctuated by distorted memories from her past. A fist raised, hitting her in the face. It had hurt, but the shock of it, the utter betrayal of love it represented, was the true horror. She rolled away from the blow, but found herself standing, bound to the frame the way Noah had been, her feet in the boots, arms stretched up, so she had no defense as her first husband came at her again. He hit her in the face, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer practicing at one of those balloon-like punching bags. Her other husband sat on the floor, tossing handfuls of money in the air and laughing like a child. God, dreams sucked.
She'd been a tool, a means to an end. No, worse. Betrayal meant you were nothing to the betrayer. Insignificant, unworthy of love. No matter how horrible the betrayer was, that was the poisonous seed they embedded in a soul, never to be dug out again.
She saw Lyda watching from the corner. She begged her for help, but why should Lyda help? Gen had turned away from her. Suddenly Gen was standing beside her, but Gen was locked in a box, invisible. Noah was chained to the frame, and Gen's first husband was hitting him. Her other ex approached, bat in hand. Though she screamed in protest inside that soundproof box, he brought it down on Noah's fingers. She heard the crunch of bone. Blood drained from Noah's face, body giving way before the blows, but his burning eyes remained on Gen and Lyda. Not asking for rescue, not asking for anything. But needing everything.
Gen kept screaming, wondering why Lyda did nothing. She was a statue, made of smooth concrete. All except her eyes. Gen saw pain there. Now, instead of being right beside Gen, Lyda was watching from a remote mountain, far away from Gen and Noah. Yet Gen could still see that pain in her face, and she wanted to ease it, take it into herself. But the only way she could help either one of them was if she could get out of the box. If she could touch them both, she'd break this nightmare, the solitary confinement into which they'd placed themselves, fighting their own personal demons alone. But she needed their help to do it.
"Help...help me...please..."
Just as she was despairing, she began to hear music. A guitar, strumming out an aimless, wistful ballad. Slowly, too slowly, it started drawing her away from the nightmare, coaxing her on a short drift through dark clouds of sleep, and floating her down into fantasy. She was in a stable. A bard sat on a hay bale in front of a horse stall. He'd been given this place to sleep, after playing for his supper in the great hall. Now his music had a much smaller audience. It had wooed the attentions of a kitchen wench and the lady of the house.
The kitchen wench sat on another bale close to him, the lady of the house in the shadows, watching. He played to their hearts, making them both long for him. Gen stared at Noah's beautiful, unbroken hands, his long fingers plucking and stroking the strings. He had the musician's irresistible lure, as if the way he sang or played telegraphed what kind of lover he would be, his ability to make music with one's body the same way.
Gen realized then she was in a hazy half-sleep, banishing the nightmare by consciously weaving more details around this preferred stage. As a teenager, she'd attended a heavy metal concert, and the tickets had put her close enough to the stage to watch the visceral way the guitarist pounded on his instrument, cradled against his leather-clad pelvis. The ultimate bad boy, who'd pound into her in the same wild, untamed way.
The bard's music was a different, spiraling, clouds-in-the-sky feeling, but no less seductive. She was the kitchen wench, in a peasant smock that barely held her breasts, pushed up by the waist cincher she wore. The bard's gaze slid over them. Often.
He'd had his supper, and was now playing for dessert. That undercurrent of male interest dampened her cunt, made her breasts ache for touch. The lady of the house came and sat next to her. When she stretched out an arm behind Gen, Gen leaned into her body, the side of her breast pressed against her Mistress's as they both listened. Her lady's long hair was already unbound for the night. She wore a velvet robe over her nightrail, which made her no less imperious yet so sexually mesmerizing it was impossible not to be drawn to her. She stroked Gen's hair, the bare line of her shoulder, as they both watched him. His eyes, the color of a dark ale, followed the movement, intensified at the implication.
Gen remembered her station then, giving her lady the hay bale, sinking down to the floor at her lady's knee. Yet her Mistress kept her hand on her. She stroked Gen's throat so she lifted her head, met her lady's mouth for a long, sweet kiss. Her slender hand caressed Gen's breast, so accessible in the blouse. It wouldn't be the first time she'd shared her lady's bed, for her Mistress had appetites as strong as any man's, but tonight it would be a threesome. The bard missed a chord. Her lady smiled against Gen's lips.
"We'll have to punish him for that, won't we, rabbit?"
Gen came out of the smoky fantasy. She had her hand between her legs. The music hadn't been part of fantasy or dream. She was hearing guitar music. Noah apparently had retrieved the instrument from her craft room. He'd had more music lessons than her, enough to strum out the tune that had guided her fantasy.
She wished Lyda was here, in bed with her. But it was hard to envision Lyda in Gen's simple bed. Seeing herself in Lyda's opulent tester bed was much easier. The Mistress would tie Gen's hands to the rails, move down her body, feasting on Gen's cunt while she begged for mercy the woman would wait a long time to give. Noah would be locked beneath the bed, listening to Gen's moans, his hands bound so he couldn't touch himself. Lyda wanted him to climax from nothing more than listening.
Was this part of subspace-subdrop as well, one's libido bouncing back faster than a boomerang? Gen turned on her side, listening. Just as she'd ordered, he hadn't come into her room. He was humming along with the guitar tune, sitting in the hallway, perhaps leaning against the wall next to her door. Had she cried out, such that he'd known she was having a nightmare? No. If that had happened, he would have come to her, all bets off. Maybe he'd just anticipated her sleep would be restless. As Chloe had said and Gen was learning firsthand, he excelled at anticipating a woman's needs.
