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“As long as I get to go to Venice at least once.” I wouldn’t bend on that stipulation. But my tone grew serious. “It’s all well and good to talk about running around all over the world, but it’s not practical. I’ve got the magazine, we’ve got Olivia—”
“But you don’t have them tonight,” El-Mudad said with an arched brow.
“It’s not like we can run away to France tonight,” I reminded him.
“We can’t run away to France until Neil learns to speak French properly,” El-Mudad said, looking mischievously at him.
I squinched up my nose in confusion. “What are you talking about? Neil speaks French fluently.”
“Neil thinks he speaks French fluently.” El-Mudad chuckled. “The reality—”
“Oh, all right, all right. Perhaps I…overestimated my skill.” Neil gave a dark laugh, his eyes practically glittering with lascivious intent. “But who says we can’t run away to France tonight?”
Chapter Seven
The recreation Pavillon Français stood in a secluded, quiet part of the compound. It was far enough from the main house that driving was the most comfortable option, and to get there, a person had to know the way. For instance, they would have to know to ignore the posted warnings about high voltage this and utility that.
Neil thought of everything.
While I’d once thought of it as a completely useless, wasteful little structure—we’d even talked about tearing it down—Neil had transformed it into a decadent retreat as a wedding present. Like the real building on the grounds of Versailles, our Pavillon was made of one octagonal center room, surrounded by four “cabinets”, smaller rooms that Neil had dedicated to all sorts of wonderful perversions. We entered the large center room directly—a deviation from the original design—and Neil locked the door behind us. Though each long window and French door was equipped with blackout curtains, they were all wide open, with just the gauzy sheers drifting in the central air—another deviation from Marie Antoinette’s plans, though I knew, for sure, she would have been into it if it had been around in the eighteenth century.
“I’ve never been inside when it’s been so light,” El-Mudad mused, crossing the gold and black sunburst design in the marble floor. He went to a window and pushed the curtain back. “And no one will see in?”
“If they ever have, they haven’t complained,” Neil said, strolling the perimeter of the room, hands in his pockets.
El-Mudad grinned. “Who would complain?”
“It’s very private back here,” I reassured him. “I wouldn’t be comfortable at all if it wasn’t. Especially since my mom lives on the property.”
“What do you think tonight?” Neil asked, nodding toward one set of double doors. “What are we in the mood for?”
There were three options: the bedroom, the bathroom, or the machine room. The fourth was a comfort room, stocked with all the aftercare essentials that might be needed after a session. No sexy shenanigans happened in there.
El-Mudad considered. “Perhaps…no games tonight.”
Neil’s eyebrows rose.
In answer to his unspoken question, El-Mudad went on, “No orders. No dominance. Just the three of us, this time.”
“I’d like that,” I said, looking to Neil nervously. “And…protection?”
“I’ve only been with you.” El-Mudad nodded to us. “And you?”
“I was with Gena in March, but I did get tested,” I told him. “But I’m fine with whatever makes the two of you comfortable. Neil?”
“If it’s down to me, I vote no on condoms,” he joked. He hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me in sharply. I gasped and laughed as he dragged me up on my toes. He teased my earlobe with his teeth and growled, “I love the way you feel. And I know he does, too.”
“Very much,” El-Mudad confirmed.
Conversations like this hadn’t always been easy for me. Even after my first fling with Neil all those years ago, something about the mechanics of safe sex discussions felt clumsy to me. Maybe because every guy claimed “I’m clean, I swear,” and “Come on, you can trust me.” The fact that I could actually trust Neil and El-Mudad went a long way.
“And birth control?” El-Mudad asked.
“Taken care of.” I loved my IUD. The installation had been well worth the benefits. Even though Neil had been through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, we both had this irrational fear that some statistical anomaly would strike us. It had before.
El-Mudad’s eyebrows rose. “Well, then, we seem to be of the same mind.”
“So it seems.” Neil’s hands drifted up my sides then to the buttons of my blouse. He popped one, and another, and another, until the top was loose enough for El-Mudad to push the fabric off one of my shoulders. He bent his head and kissed every inch of skin as he exposed it.
“Shall we go to the bedroom?” Neil’s voice was low, hungry. He wouldn’t have been able to stick to a game if he’d tried.
Without any further warning, El-Mudad swept me into his arms and off my feet, slinging me over his shoulder like a caveman. Which was both adorable and disorienting. I shrieked and giggled, watching the floor pass by with each bouncing step. We entered the bedroom, and he set me on my feet, again. Somewhere on the walk, Neil had lost his shirt.
