Three Player Game Read online

  That’s not happening again. I won’t let it.

  “Lee.” Vince swiveled to get in front of him, though he was careful not to withdraw his support, which was good, because Lee wasn’t sure he could hold his own weight quite yet. He couldn’t even straighten all the way until his muscles loosened.

  “Lee,” Vince said more forcefully.

  “Yes! Fine. Whatever.”

  Vince didn’t move.

  “What?”

  “Is there an issue with the plan?”

  Lee stared at him. “You’re giving me a choice?” He didn’t want to sound as surprised as that had come out.

  Vince blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Do you need one?”

  Did he? Icing his back was a good idea. And he needed a warm meal. He needed rest. Not having to go home to an empty house littered with unpacked cardboard boxes sounded nicer than he wanted to admit.

  Not offering an alternative to Vince’s plan was the same as saying he didn’t need—maybe even didn’t want—a choice in the matter, though. There went that spiraling tingle down his spine again. He tried to ignore it.

  “Is the couch the best you have to offer?” Too petty? But it was something. Assertion of his own will.

  Vince pursed his lips. “Stubborn,” he muttered. “You can lie down on the spare bed, then.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.” There was a moment in which Vince seemed to un-puff, and Lee let out a breath of his own, tension draining out with the air. “You need help?” Vince asked.

  Slowly, Lee straightened and took a breath. “I can manage.”

  “You’ll feel better once you flatten out,” Vince assured him. “And some home-cooked soup will do you good.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” Lee started off in the direction of the hallway. “Which is it?”

  “First door on the right,” Vince called after him. “Pete, we have ice packs?”

  As Pete jumped to do Vince’s bidding, Lee shuffled down the hallway to the first door on the right. He pushed it open and stepped inside.

  “Well, well.”

  Lying on the end of the bed was an impressive dildo and a quite nice flogger.

  “Oh.” Pete’s voice behind him was faint. “I’ll . . . just . . .” He scurried around Lee and scooped the items up off the bed. “Sorry.”

  Lee harrumphed, covering the tension sheering through his body with the heavy grunt. Carefully, he lowered himself to the edge of the bed, then considered for a long time how to get his feet up and himself onto his back without another spasm.

  “You want help?” Pete asked, voice soft.

  “I don’t need help.”

  Pete shuffled his feet. “It’s not because you can’t do it alone.” He straightened. “Maybe because you don’t have to do it by yourself.” He hurriedly placed the ice pack on the bed, covered it with a thin towel, and crouched at Lee’s feet. Without asking, he loosened the laces of Lee’s shoes and pried first one, then the other off his feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  Pete glanced up at him “Helping.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shh. I know.” He turned his attention to Lee’s socks and peeled one off. “Just like I don’t need a flogging session to relax.” The quicksilver glance he shot at the items he’d left on the cabinet beside the bed might have been easy to miss if Lee hadn’t been watching him so closely. “I can do it myself.” He sat back on his heels and rolled the sock into a small enough bundle to stick into Lee’s shoe. “I can meditate, take long baths, read a good book. But not having all the responsibility every second is the quickest, surest way to clear my mind. Vince is good at taking the reins. I can feel . . . relieved of it, you know? Not helpless or useless, just . . . he takes charge so I let it all go for a while.”

  “That so?” But as Pete pulled off Lee’s other sock and helped him to lie down, all Lee could think about was the way Vince had looked after him from the moment he’d woken with the twinged back, and hadn’t even stopped when they’d arrived at Pete’s doorstep. Those memories calmed the shimmy of nerves and carried him past the deeper memories he didn’t want to dwell on.

  “He’s good at it, Lee.”

  “Isn’t he just.” Even when he’s not in the fucking room.

  “And he likes doing it, so don’t be so afraid to let him.”

  “Not afraid,” Lee growled, ignoring the memories with a force of will.

  The cool of the ice pack seeped into his muscles as he lay there, watching as Pete unlocked the cabinet next to the bed and stowed the dildo and flogger inside.

  “Toy chest?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Pete replaced the chain and padlock, then dropped the key into his pocket.

  “Why do you have the key?” If Pete was the submissive partner, that didn’t make sense. Lee had never had such— Well. It hadn’t been his experience, had it? He shied away from those thoughts. Again.

  “It’s not that formal.” Pete turned and rested his ass on the edge of the cabinet. “He tops.” He grinned, though he was staring at his hands and wouldn’t look at Lee. “He’s pretty good at that too, by the way. When he’s up for it.”

  “No shit?”

  “You wouldn’t think it, would you?”

  “Are you supposed to be talking about this with a stranger?” God, please stop talking about it. His pits were wet with sweat, and he wished he could control the shivery heat rising in his body. The mixed reaction he always had to this pissed him off.

  Pete shrugged, straightened, and stuck his hands into his pockets. “You should know how we are. So you understand why he doesn’t always ask me to do things, and why that’s no big deal. Some people don’t get it, and that’s okay, but I like to give them all the information. At least if they’re going to judge, that way they know exactly what they’re judging.” He shot Lee an almost sweet grin. “Relax. I’ll be back in a few minutes to take the ice.”

  “Thanks.” Lee furrowed his brow. “I think?”

  “You should know how we are.” What had he wandered into, exactly? He was here to recover. Nothing else. All he wanted was the strength to get out of bed on his own. He didn’t know or care what mousy little Vince and his wild-haired partner got up to in theirs. Now if only his back would stop seizing and his body would quit its shivering. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on breathing and not thinking. No thinking, and definitely no remembering a past he was well and truly over.

  Getting into the rhythm of something would help Vince calm his thoughts and level his mood. This was tried and true. He knew it to work. Okay, so he wished it could be the rhythm of using a flogger, or possibly fucking Pete, even if it was with a dildo. But they had a house guest. He tried not to think about the fact the house guest was the reason for his turmoil.

  “Just pick a task and do it,” he reminded himself. “One step at a time.”

  Food required preparation, so he cast around the kitchen, found potatoes, flour, cream, butter, onions, frozen fish, and frozen shrimp. Pete kept the seasoning cabinet well stocked, and there was half a homemade loaf of bread on the counter.

  “Soup and toast it is.” He pulled potatoes out of the bag and took them to the sink, frowning at the limp shrimp sitting in a bowl. “Gross. Looks like maybe Pete needs the grounding as much as I do.” He shook his head. “And I’m talking to myself. All the more reason.”

  With a sigh, he turned on the tap and proceeded to throw out the shrimp, then wash the potatoes. A simple rhythm, slicing them—discs, sticks, cubes, discs, sticks, cubes—each potato following the same path to the pot, calmed him. When Pete returned to the kitchen, Vince’s restlessness was under control.

  “Got him settled?” Vince asked, not looking up from his task.

  “As settled as I think he gets.” Pete washed his hands and set out a fry pan on the stove. Vince appreciated that Pete seemed to know what was needed.

  “He can be hard to handle.”

  Pete snorted. “I figure if I can wrangle
a dozen extras all day, get them where they need to be when they need to be there, and do what they’re supposed to do, Lee isn’t all that much trouble.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Hello. I herd cats for a living, remember? Pretty sure I can handle an injured accountant for a few days.”

  “Oh, I dare you to tell them that.”

  A small snort met that dare. “I do. All the time. You’d think actors would be sensitive about being compared to finicky felines, but no. They like it. As long as I assure them each they are the big scary lion and not let on they’re really the squeaky feral moggies.” He found a whisk for the sauce and a spatula for the onions. “Actors are not always simple people, but I manage them. I’m good at my job, Vince.”

  This was true. Vince could take a set of numbers and make them dance. If he had to, he could finesse them to do just about anything he needed them to do. Pete accomplished that with difficult people every day. But it took a lot of his energy and focus. It left him drained and frazzled, and Vince didn’t want to introduce that dynamic into Pete’s personal life. He had enough of it at work.

  Pete gave Vince a little look, like he knew precisely what Vince was thinking. “Stop. If I can handle the kitties twelve hours a day, eight days a week, I can certainly deal with one honey badger for a night or two.”

  Vince laughed. “Again. I dare you to call him that to his face.”

  “He doesn’t scare me. I think he maybe hasn’t had the proper . . . relaxation techniques.”

  “Going to teach him to meditate?” Vince asked, though he was already smiling when Pete stuck out his tongue at him.

  “Yeah. That’s exactly where I was going with that.”

  “Heh.” They bumped shoulders, and a brief silence fell as Vince finished up the potatoes. He longed to ask exactly what Pete was hinting at, but his lover was clearly already on edge, and Vince didn’t want to add more stress. Not over something that was his own wishful thinking anyway.

  “What would you like me to do?” Pete asked, once the potatoes were in the pot and the pot was on the stove to parboil them.

  “Chop and fry the onions or make the white sauce. You choose.”

  “’Cause I just love stirring so.”

  Vince pointed at the sauce pan. “Stir, you.”

  “Fine.” Pete rolled his eyes, but the petulance was faked. The relaxed smile playing about his lips was the truth.

  Again, for a few minutes, they worked in silence.

  “Thanks for taking care of him,” Vince said after a while. “He wasn’t too . . .”

  “Prickly?” Pete supplied.

  “I guess you could call it that.”

  “Oh, I can. And I will.” Pete’s voice rose a bit, hardened at the core.

  “You okay? Did he say something?”

  “No. Sorry. It’s not him. He reminds me of . . . you know.”

  “Your brother.”

  “A bit. Is that weird?”

  Vince thought for a moment, then cocked his head. “No. I can see it. But maybe I shouldn’t have—”

  “Don’t say it. You could not have left him alone in that state.”

  “I don’t want you to feel like that ever again, babe.” Vince had never met Pete’s older brother, Bradley, but Pete’s stories about how Brad had treated him, mocked and bullied him constantly growing up, were more than enough for him to know he never wanted his lover to go through that now if he could help it.

  “And I won’t.” Pete had added flour, butter, and some of the cream to his pan, but he set the cream down to touch Vince’s forearm. “I won’t, because I’m not who I was then. Brad got to me because I was his little brother. For so long, that relationship was all I had to tell me who I was. Now I have a career, a house, a superior boyfriend”—he winked at Vince—“and I know who I am. I don’t need him, or anyone else, to help me define myself.” He picked the cream back up and started pouring and stirring again. “So yeah, Lee reminds me a bit of Brad, but only on the surface. Brad is a bastard because he has no soul. Lee is spiky because his soul is bruised. There’s a difference.”

  “I don’t want his spikes to hurt you.”

  “They won’t. He won’t. Because he isn’t cruel. Lost maybe. Alone, definitely. But not cruel.” He shrugged. “Plus, he’s in pain. He just needs to feel better, and we can help him with that. I’m sure he’s not like this all the time.”

  “Ha!”

  “Be nice.”

  Vince set his knife down next to the onion he’d been dicing and pushed Pete’s pan off the heat. “That, right there? That’s the very best thing about you, you know that?”

  Pete blinked up at him as Vince backed him against the counter. “What are you talking about?”

  Lacing his arms through Pete’s and around his waist, Vince held him tight, chest to chest. “You see through people. You see into them, and you expect to see good, so you do see good.”

  Pete’s cheeks flushed pink. “You love that about me,” he said, voice a little breathless, gaze a lot hopeful. He didn’t want to admit it, but Vince knew. Sometimes, he still heard his brother’s ridicule, however much he could rationalize it away as untrue now he was an adult. And that alien voice in his head still had the power to sting. Vince saw that every time Pete unconsciously fished for a compliment or tried to avoid meeting his gaze.

  And he’d seen it in Lee, for just a breath before Lee lashed out. Someone, somewhere, had taught Lee the importance of defending himself at all costs, even the cost of letting anyone close enough to care about him. Vince wanted badly to undo those defenses to get at the man beneath. He had a sneaking suspicion if he managed it, he’d discover someone amazing.

  Swiftly, so Pete couldn’t duck his face away, Vince cupped a hand around his jaw and the other he pressed to his clavicle so he could caress his throat with a thumb. “I do. I love it—you—very much.” He kissed Pete, then, deeply, demanding entrance with his tongue, pleased that Pete offered the surrender enthusiastically. It was good, soothing right down to his soul, to have all of Pete’s attention for that moment, however brief. And, when he eased back, it was gratifying to see Pete’s flush had deepened, crawled up to his hairline, and his breath was coming a little bit faster.

  “Good,” Vince said, satisfied and grounded in a way meticulously slicing vegetables hadn’t managed to make him. “Thank you.”

  “For a kiss?” Pete sounded slightly confused.

  “For the kiss. For you.” Vince pulled Pete close again to kiss his forehead, stroke his nape, smell him. “Yeah. Thank you.” He took a step back. “I’m going to put the onions in the pan. Can you keep an eye on them while you’re stirring?”

  “Course. Happy to.”

  “I’ll take our badger a new ice pack.”

  Pete grinned. “I like that.” He focused on his pan, setting it back on the heat, but gave a small, uncertain shrug. “Maybe we can keep him.”

  Vince lifted both eyebrows, but Pete seemed intent on his cooking. “We’ll see,” he said, cautious. “He’s a wild thing. Might not take to domestication.”

  Pete resumed pouring the rest of the cream into the pan as he stirred and hummed. “We’ll have to find out. He needs it, I think.”

  God, domestication looks good on Pete, though. Once, not so long ago, Pete had been the wild one, harried and skittish, and less than trusting. Interesting that Lee reminded Pete of his older brother, because from Vince’s point of view, Lee wasn’t so different from the Pete that Vince had first met. Sure, he was more refined and cultured, but he was just as skittish. Just as uncertain, one-on-one, as Pete had ever been. The spikes were for show, as Pete had guessed in the first five minutes of interacting with him. It had taken Vince longer than it had taken Pete to see. Once he and Lee had begun working together more closely, though, he’d seen glimmerings of the possibilities. The trip home from Canada had lifted the veil to finally show Vince that the Lee beneath was hungry for attention that didn’t poke him back when he bristled
. He just wasn’t ready to admit that. Maybe, he didn’t even know it. Vince found himself wishing he could be the one—or one of the ones—to help Lee feed that hunger.

  For another moment, he watched Pete hum and stir and smile to himself. Could they? The idea made his heart skip a bit, imagining a life shared three ways. Sweet, kind, generous, kinetic Pete and stern, arrogant, vulnerable Lee. Shouldn’t it be harder to imagine than it was?

  “You going to check on him?” Pete asked without turning around.

  “Yeah.” Vince’s voice ran rough over the affirmation, and he cleared his throat, pushed at his slipping glasses. “Be right back, babe.”

  “Take your time.” The singsong cadence to Pete’s words showed, better than almost anything could, his contented state. Vince couldn’t help but wonder what Pete was thinking. But he couldn’t stand there forever trying to see through the wild curls into his lover’s head.

  “Right.” He backed out of the kitchen and turned for the guest room. At the open door, he stopped and knocked on the frame. “Hey.”

  Lee grunted at him. His eyes were closed, his face paler than it should have been, and he didn’t move, but after a heartbeat, he did speak. “You can come in. No use lurking in the damn doorway like a creepy stalker.”

  “I brought more ice for your back.”

  Lee opened one eye. “Thanks.” At least he no longer balked at this part. The old ice pack was on the floor next to the bed, probably dropped there when Lee had yanked it free.

  “Can you roll, or do you need help?”

  Lee held out a hand, and Vince grasped it, offering an anchor for Lee to pull himself onto his side so Vince could position the ice pack. He braced him again as Lee rolled back down.

  “Your little friend—”

  “Pete. Please use his name.”

  “Pete. He lives here?”

  “Owns it. He’s a second or third director’s assistant. I forget the exact title he has now. He moved up pretty quick. Not sure if he’s landed yet, and some of the job descriptions overlap a bit. It gets confusing. Mostly, he wrangles the extras and coordinates some of the off-set shoots. I think he’s been doing some directing, but I’m not clear on that bit.” He was rambling, but thankfully Lee interrupted him.