Page 89 of Turning Back

A part of me is wondering if we’ll ever leave this game. A part of me is wondering if I want to. A part of me is terrified about those parts of me.

I am here for Quin. I came back for Quin. I want Quin.

And yet I want this too.

I have become Elias, I think. Addicted to the game. Addicted to the familiarity of the three of us. Addicted to the way they make me feel when we make love together. I’d forgotten that while I was gone. The last year or so of the time I was playing, Bric was emotionally absent. Content to visit me on his days and nights. Content to take me out to parties and events. Content to let Quin have me in a special way. To claim me, to own me, to love me just for me.

But now he seems… invested. I think it’s because of Adley, to be honest. I think he’s bonded with her. Correction, I know he has. Adley has changed the dynamic in ways I hadn’t thought of when I decided to come home. She has changed the way Quin thinks about me, for sure. Adley was the reason he was so angry with me those first few days. Missing out on my pregnancy and her birth was a blow he won’t easily forget. Forgive, yes. Maybe. But forget? Sex is not enough to make him forget.

And now Adley is the reason Bric is invested, I’m sure of it.

What does that mean for the long-term plan? I admit, Quin doesn’t seem to be thinking about me as his sole partner. He is invested too, but in a different way. He’s invested in the us. Even more so than he was last year when I left.

Am I setting myself up for failure? Am I pushing the possibility of me and Quin away, and replacing it with the surety of me, and Quin, and Bric?

Bric finishes the zip, gathers up my hair, and places it down my back just the way he found it.

He’s so tender. I wonder if anybody else in the world knows just how tender Elias Bricman can be?

I don’t know first-hand how he likes to fuck women down in the basement of the Club. But I have an idea. He’s warned me before. I have asked him for certain things during sex. I have moaned out phrases like, “Choke me” and “Fuck me harder” and “Slap my ass”. And sometimes I wanted it harder than he delivered, and would beg for more.

He would always put me back in my place with a firm, “No, Rochelle. You don’t understand how much farther I can go.” One time he even confessed that he was dangerous. We weren’t fucking at the time. Just talking. And I said I liked being choked. And I do. I don’t want to be suffocated, for fuck’s sake. But I crave his unpredictable dominance when I’m about to come.

So I said that. And he replied, “I will hurt you. I will enjoy hurting you. I am dangerous. So don’t ask me to do that in the middle of things, Rochelle. Don’t ever ask me to do that when we’re wild.”

I believed him. And I never asked again. There was a dark look in his eyes. A raw blaze of rage that scared me a little. But it went away and I forgot about it. Until now.

I won’t ask. I believe there are a lot of things locked deep inside Elias Bricman’s head. And I know for certain that no woman he’s ever fucked down in that Club has ever had the pleasure of him zipping up her dress and whispering his quiet jealousy in her ear.

I am special.

Chapter Twenty - Quin

I catch them in a quiet moment. I came up the stairs, the elevator being used or broken. But either way, I was impatient to get home so I took the stairs, and I catch them.

Adley is wandering down the hallway in a baby walker, a bright red plastic block in her mouth, drool running down her chin. I stoop to look her in the eyes—those blue, blue eyes—and she smiles at me. I’m just about to pick her up and hold her close, really feel the connection, when I hear whispers coming from the bedroom.

“Be right back,” I whisper down to Adley. When I get to the door Rochelle is standing in front of a massive framed, full-length mirror propped against the wall. Bric is standing behind her, almost possessively, as he adjusts her hair. I think he was just zipping up her dress. He leans down into her neck and whispers something I don’t catch. Rochelle laughs, closing her eyes like she’s enjoying the moment.

They are beautiful people.

“That dress,” I say, walking into the bedroom. “I almost want to rip it off you.”

“Do it,” Bric growls.

It comes out way too serious to be a joke, and both Rochelle and I laugh. “Do not touch this dress until after dinner, Mr. Foster. I like it way too much to take it off now.”

I come up next to them, put my arm around Rochelle’s waist, and pull her close to me. Bric reciprocates, his arm sliding past mine, and pulls us both close to him.

We stare at each other in the mirror.

We are beautiful people.

I reach into my coat pocket and pull out my phone. “Hold still a sec,” I say, bringing up the camera. There is no flash and no shutter click as I take the picture. But we all feel the way the moment was just captured.

“We make a nice… thriple.” Rochelle chuckles. “That’s a real word, by the way. I saw it on a Showtime series last year.”

“They have a thriple on Showtime?” Bric asks.