“We can’t engineer a plane crash on a desert island and have a suitcase full of sex toys wash ashore magically,” Mike said dryly, taking a sip.
“No, but we could get Josie and Alex to babysit for a night while we get some velvet handcuffs and drip some hot wax on a blindfolded Laura!”
The air rang with Dylan’s words, and...yup. Hard again. A quick glance at Mike told him he was in the same state.
“If this is what she really wants,” Mike mused, “why doesn’t she just ask for it? She knows we’re about as open as anyone can be in the bedroom.”
Dylan shook his head, then took a good, long look at Mike. “You look like hell.” Hair overgrown, a scruffy beard, and a button down with a missing top button greeted his eyes.
“You’re just a shorter, darker version of me.” A not-so-gentle set of fingers brushed against Dylan’s overgrown cheek.
“We’ve let ourselves go,” Dylan said. Aside from quarterly meetings with the Board of Directors for his new charity, an organization designed to help families of cancer victims with services and grant money, Dylan didn’t have anywhere he had to be that required cleaning himself up. When Jillian was born he’d stopped volunteering at the fire station, so now he was basically a professional dad.
And trust fund dude, a fate he and Mike had settled in to, finally. Even Mike had handed over most of the day-to-day operations of the ski resort to his management. No one really needed to look presentable for society. Other than basic hygiene, they just hadn’t cared.
“We can fix that right now. A quick haircut, shave, and some decent clothes would go far. You clean up nicely when you bother,” Mike said, smiling.
Dylan frowned. “Not enough. It’s not like we’ve looked like this forever. I think we need to go further.”
Mike finished his espresso and set the cup on the end table with a grace that belied his size.
“How far?”
Dylan tapped on the eReader and pulled up a page full of sex toys. “Let’s start here.”
“Alex was kidding when he suggested we get her a new sex toy!”
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea, though. Except the toys are for us to use on her. Not for her to use on her, you know? How about we read more of these stories and buy some of the...implements they use, and give Laura a taste of what her imagination is creating?” Dylan presented the idea to Mike with, he hoped, a sense of urgency and excitement that would convert him.
“Hi, honey!” Mike hissed. “Now that you spent sixteen hours breastfeeding all day and are coming to bed covered in vomit and smelling like sour milk, here we are with the Baby Jesus butt plug and a Sybian!”
“Not like that,” Dylan insisted. “And what’s a Sybian?”
Mike took the eReader, flipped back to a different book, and pointed. “Start reading here. I’ll be back in a minute.” Dylan looked up and watched Mike leave the room, his frumpled t-shirt and the shaggy blonde curls over his ears symptoms of benign neglect, and sighed.
They really had let themselves go.
But that shouldn’t matter. And what the hell was a Sybian?
Ninety seconds later Dylan knew exactly what a Sybian was, and he was ready to go order one if there was any hope he could watch Laura use it. And there was that scene with the sex swing....
Where was she hiding this crazy, uninhibited side of her? Under those soft curves, that dimpled smile, those lips she bit at the moment of orgasm? The mere idea that she’d ride a machine with a dildo attached to it and like it made him nearly come in his pants right now. Flipping frantically through the eReader, he opened another book with a woman’s hands bound on the front. Then one where she wore a mask and was draped in red silk. Yet another with a cuff link and pearls on it. And another...
Ropes and handcuffs and melted candle wax and dildos and dilators and butt plugs.
His very own Laura had an active, healthy, amazingly wonderful inner sex life.
Unleash the woman, for fuck’s sake!
Or, he mused, perhaps what she wanted was to be leashed.
“Are you a Sybian expert now?” Mike asked as he returned from the kitchen, chomping on an energy bar.
Dylan shifted himself in a way that made Mike laugh. “Oh, you laugh, but you know exactly how I feel right now.”
“Yup.”
“That Sybian...”
“Yup.”
“I’m thinking about ordering one.”
A cocked eyebrow was Mike’s calm response. “You are?”
“You in?”
“I say order one of everything from those books and see what happens.” The devilish gleam in Mike’s eyes was so different from his droll manner that even after ten years together, Dylan was amazed the man could surprise him.
“You realize you’re talking to a guy with nearly unlimited money and zero impulse control?”
“You realize you are talking to a guy who has had sex twice and exactly one blow job in six months?” Mike’s face was serious, eyes gone dark and smoky. Mischief was gone. This was a man determined.
Dylan’s jaw dropped. Thank God they were in agreement. Whatever it took to unlock the passionate woman they’d met fifteen months ago and to regain the intimacy they all seemed to crave—but couldn’t quite find their way to—was what they needed to do now. Something had to give.
“What are we wasting time talking for, then? Let’s start clicking.”
Crreak. The telltale sign of their bedroom door opening made them both freeze.
“Shit!” Dylan hissed. Mike put a finger to his lips and stopped chewing on the energy bar. Both stood there, ears cocked. The sound of footsteps, and then the baby began to babble.
Mike looked at the eReader. “It’s been nearly two hours!”
“No way!”
Mike tapped and slid his fingers wildly, getting the machine back to the Home screen. “You order whatever we need later on from your phone. You have carte blanche. Get whatever you want.”
An evil laugh bubbled up inside Dylan as he rubbed his hands together.
This was going to be fun.
Alex
“Are you crazy? Let Josie watch the baby overnight? That woman can’t keep a houseplant alive with a growlight, fertilizer, Google, and a team of highly-trained pot farmers at her disposal.” Laura’s high, reedy voice could be heard from across the room, as Josie had the phone on speaker mode. Josie had insisted that Alex spend the night at her place—fortunately, Darla was at a gig for Trevor’s band. Joe was still in law school, though all Darla had talked about for weeks was how he’d be home soon for winter break. For Alex, it meant a nice night together away from his roommate, John, who had returned from his medical fellowship full of talk of medical genetics and one-upmanship politics as he tried to get a coveted research spot for next year.