Robert’s words nearly pulled her from the brink, nearly shattered her joy, and yet she’d gone too far, released her will too completely. David reached down and stroked and then pinched her clit, and her rapture exploded, white hot, gargantuan, the orgasm so fierce, so consuming, she expected to see actual flames shoot up around her.
She screamed but the sound seemed far away, dampened.
Theirs, forever
? Even as she soared, even as she basked in the greatest orgasm she’d ever experienced, the truth burrowed in, a cold and chilling presence in the middle of her hot and pulsating passion.
Forever was only a myth. Everyone and everything eventually went away.
“Are you all right, sweetie?” Robert held Jillian on his lap and ran his hands up and down her body. He recognized the aftershocks of an explosive orgasm. But he wondered if maybe there wasn’t something else happening inside her as well.
He hadn’t meant to reveal as much about their intentions as he had. They’d only wanted to claim her in such a way that she couldn’t put them into the mental box she’d prepared for them. They believed with all their hearts that she was a natural sub, and that she was indeed destined to be theirs.
But they also knew she’d lived all her life having her greatest needs go unmet, year after year, to the point that she’d had to bury those needs just in order to be able to survive. She’d also likely had to be in charge of every damn thing, all the damn time.
He didn’t know her whole story yet, but he had enough of it to imagine her mindset. He never should have mentioned the word “forever” to her, because most likely she was nowhere near ready to hear it.
Jillian needed them, not only to love her but to prove to her they weren’t going anywhere. They
would
prove to her that she could depend on them, no matter what.
You need her just as much as she needs you. You need her to be the one person you can take care of without risk
.
Robert told his inner voice to shut the fuck up. He didn’t need to psychoanalyze himself or his motives. Yes, he’d had issues up north. The atmosphere in the trauma center of the inner-city hospital had played hell with his psyche, and he knew it.
But that was then and there, and this was here and now. He’d done what was necessary to regain control of himself and his emotions. Case closed.
Robert realized his woman hadn’t answered him. “Jillian?”
“Mmm. I feel as if everything inside me has short-circuited.”
David reached out and stroked his hand over her hair. “Yeah. You had that affect on me, too, baby.” He leaned closer and kissed the top of her head. Then he met Robert’s gaze and smiled.
Their woman was snuggled into Robert with her head resting on his shoulder and her face just under his chin. He saw and felt her smile. Somewhere deep inside the bit of tension that had been building within him eased. She’d pushed away whatever shadows had threatened when he’d said “forever.” He knew avoidance when he saw it in action. And while there would come a time when they would have to deal with those shadows, that the time was not now.
“Will you let us give you proper aftercare, sweetie?”
“What’s that?”
“When a woman has submitted so completely to her Doms, they owe her whatever she needs, or wants. In this case, aftercare would be David going over to your apartment and gathering a few items for you for the night. Meanwhile I’ll get you dressed and take you home with me, and then undress you and get us both into the shower and then the hot tub.”
“I can make a mean omelet, and fry up ham like nobody’s business,” David said. “So after I join you in the tub and we make sure you’re perfectly fine, I’ll cook us dinner.”
“I feel fine, though I am a little sore. I’m not sorry, though. Never think that.”
“You’re wonderful.” David kissed her head.
“You are.” Robert kept his hands caressing her, pleased when the shivers stopped.
“Will you tell me more about this whole Dom/sub thing, then? I had planned to do some research on the Internet once I got home tonight, but now I don’t think I’m going to be there to do it. Just as well, as I really don’t want to be alone tonight.”
He felt her tense for just a heartbeat, which told him she hadn’t meant to express herself in quite that way. He’d bet her thinking self was getting pretty annoyed at being so bluntly open with them. He decided to act as if he hadn’t noticed all her little tells. “Why didn’t you look it up online today, between patients?”
Jillian shook her head. “No, that would be stealing.”
She didn’t open her eyes, so she couldn’t see the look he exchanged with his brother. Was there another woman on the face of the earth so intrinsically honest? Well, probably, but what a wonder she was, anyway.
David shook his head and left the conference room. He returned a few moments later with Jillian’s purse.
“Here, baby. Would you please get me your keys?”
“Mmm.” She yawned and sat up, taking her handbag and fishing out her key ring. “That’s for the car, and that’s for the building, and that’s for the apartment door.”
David shook his head, and kissed her. “You’re a very organized soul, love. See you soon.”
Once they were alone, Robert said, “Let’s get you dressed, sweetie. Do you need to use the bathroom, first?”
He found it fascinating that she could blush, especially considering everything they’d done with her.
Maybe he should be shocked that they’d only been intimate with her since the day before, but he wasn’t. He didn’t have any doubts, either. Jillian Gillespie was meant to be theirs.
Despite the way she so sweetly surrendered, and the way she turned so pliant after loving, he didn’t believe for one moment that he and David were going to necessarily have smooth sailing with her from here on out.
They could still end up having one hell of a tussle ahead of them.
“I’m feeling like a slug. I’ve heard some women get energized after having a powerful orgasm. I never really knew what my reaction would be after having great sex, but now I know. I feel like a zombie.”
And there it was. He wondered if she’d consciously pulled back, emotionally, from them. Somehow, he doubted it.
That was pure conditioning, honed from years of needing to protect her most vulnerable heart
. It didn’t matter, but he had a feeling that, when threatened, she operated on that instinctive avoid-and-withdraw mentality.
He’d let her have a bit of room, but he’d close one door right now. “That wasn’t just sex, Jillian. Now here, let me help you.” He picked her up and carried her out the door of the conference room to the bathroom. He set her down, opened the door, but allowed her to go in on her own and close the door. He’d allow her some privacy, for now.
She probably had no idea the time would come when she would neither need nor want that consideration.
A few moments later she emerged. He grinned and scooped her into his arms again.
“I can walk.”
“Of course you can, but why bother when I really enjoy carrying you?”
Once back inside the conference room, he sat down with her on his lap again, in the same chair. He picked up her short-sleeved sweater and began to put it on her.
“Wait. You forgot my bra.”
“No, I didn’t. It’s right here on the other chair, next to your panties. You don’t need to wear either one of them. We’re just going back to the house, and we’re going out the back door here to my car to get there.”
He kept his tone reasonable as he dressed her. Her sweater and skirt together covered her perfectly well.
“You really are domineering, you know,” Jillian said. “Totally and completely domineering and bossy.”
“I am, but only when it will get a rise out of you, sweetie. Now, shoes, and purse, and you’re good to go.”
Jillian shook her head and laughed. She let him help her with her shoes, which told him she was still feeling a little wobbly. He’d have carried her out to the car if he thought she’d let him get away with it. When she got to her feet and looked as if she dared him to protest, he stayed silent, and indicated with a generous sweep of his arm that she could precede him.
If there was one thing Robert knew, not only from his years of medical training and practice, but also a lifetime of living with a family whose female members tended to be women of strength, it was when to pick his battles.
* * * *
Jillian couldn’t deny the pleasure of having someone else—well, a couple of someones actually—in charge and making decisions for her for a change. That didn’t mean she wanted to live that way
all
the time. She didn’t want every moment of every day scripted for her, as if she wasn’t a living, breathing,
thinking
woman.
But having two men pleasure her into oblivion and then take charge of the rest of her night, well that wasn’t a bad thing at all.
Of course there had been that one moment, just as she and Robert were both coming that felt completely off. But now that she’d had a moment to think about it, she felt certain that had only been the moment speaking.
Forever, after all, didn’t really exist.
As she exited the clinic, Jillian couldn’t help but look around, positive that
somebody
would be pointing at her in shock and then gossiping about her because she’d stepped out the back door of the clinic without any underwear on.
Funny, the way lifelong conditioning can grab you by the conscience like that. I’m completely covered. No one can tell I don’t have any underwear on.
Robert proved he could read her mind. “No one can tell you’re nekkid under there, Miss Jillian.” He exaggerated his Texan accent on the single word, making her laugh. Then he said, “Well, unless a good stiff Texas wind comes along and lifts your skirt, of course. But how often does the wind blow strong in Texas?”
Playing along, Jillian shrieked and used both hands to hold her skirt down, making
him
laugh.
In reality, she didn’t have to walk far from the clinic to the car, nor from the car to Robert’s house. It really wasn’t a big deal.
She blinked when, once back at the house, Robert was able to turn off the vehicle and make it around the car to open the passenger door for her before she fully registered they’d arrived.
“I’m not sure the hot tub is such a good idea.” She took his hand when he held his out to assist her out of the car, content to continue to let him hold it as they walked up the steps of the porch. Inside, the air-conditioned coolness kissed her skin. She yawned, and shivered, and felt drowsier by the moment.
“I won’t let you drown, Jillian. I’ll hold you on my lap, if you like, so you can feel free to go to sleep. Just let me take care of you. Do you trust me?”
If anyone else had asked her that on such short acquaintance, she would have said no. Trust was a commodity earned over time. In her case, usually a great deal of time, because she’d trusted too easily in the past, and had the scars to prove it.
But she’d already trusted this man and his brother with her body, and to a certain extent, with her heart.
Not that she was falling in love with them, or anything like that. A grown-up relationship based on mutual like, one that had sex as a key component, that was acceptable. Friends with benefits, as the younger generation called it, that was acceptable. Both of those spoke to a physical relationship with at least some emotional attachment. She couldn’t just have the physical with no feelings involved whatsoever. That wasn’t her. But admitting some emotional involvement with the Drs. Jessop didn’t have to mean anything more than that.
She would not, could not, fall in love with these two men. She mentally nodded once to herself for emphasis. And then she looked up and met Robert’s tender gaze and felt her internal walls collapse.
Yeah, right. Who the hell am I kidding
? She wouldn’t fall in love with them? She’d
already
fallen in love with them. She didn’t have to look too far to know when it had happened, either.
They’d taken care of her when she’d needed it most, even giving her two stupendous orgasms, without pleasuring themselves. They’d scooped her up and cared for her, despite her neediness—or maybe, just a little, because of it.
Rather than talking the talk, they’d walked the walk of seeing to her needs, putting her comfort and satisfaction ahead of their own.
How could she not love two such men who seemed so devoted to
her
? Especially when no one in her entire life, except for her son and her aunt, had ever given one good damn about her?
How would she ever survive when they changed their minds and told her it was over between them? How the hell would she ever go on once they left her?
“Sweetie?”
Jillian blinked, and realized Robert had been waiting for her answer to his question. She met his gaze again, but instead of censure for her going off into her own little world, she saw only patience on his face and in his eyes.
“Yes. I trust you. I trust you both.”