Safe Harbor

Chapter Fifteen

Over a month after her arrival, Clarisse seemed to have settled in.

Sully knew she still had reservations about him, but she’d quit flinching around him and had even started spontaneously hugging him.

It gave him hope.

He didn’t look up when Mac quietly walked into their bedroom one evening and knelt beside his recliner by the window, where he’d been reading. He reached out and stroked Mac’s hair. “What’s up?”

“May I talk with you, Master?”

Sully sat back and studied Mac. Formal kneel, hands on knees, head lowered. “Go ahead,” Sully told him. His gut clenched as he expected the worst. I want out, or I’m moving out with Clarisse. The first would break his heart.

The latter would crush his soul.

He knew Mac had a much closer relationship with Clarisse than he did, but he’d hoped that after their afternoon together, maybe she would eventually come to trust him the way she trusted Mac.

Maybe time had run out for that to happen.

“I love you, Master.”

Sully closed his eyes, dreading it. Here it comes.

“I want to spend my life with you,” Mac continued. “So I hope this doesn’t make you mad, but you told me to be honest.”

Get it over with, Brant, Sully thought. Please, don’t drag it out.

“I’m in love with Clarisse.”

There it was. Mac wasn’t finished, however.

“I wanted to know if you would consider letting me tell her.”

Huh? “What?” Had he heard him right?

Mac cringed. “Please don’t be upset! I still love you, and if you say no, I understand—”

“Wait. Whoa. Back up. She doesn’t know how you feel?”

Mac shook his head. “I knew I had to talk to you first.”

Sully studied him for several long minutes. “What if I say no?”

Mac’s shoulders dropped a little. “Then that would be your will.”

“And if I say yes?”

He heard Mac’s breath catch. “That is also your will.”

Sully stood. “Take your collar off and come here.” He sat on the end of their bed while Mac scrambled to comply. When Mac was seated next to him, Sully looked at him. “What do you want, Brant?”

“Honestly? I’d love for the three of us to be together. If she’ll have us like that. Both of us.”

“Both of us?”

Mac nodded.

Sully took a moment to compose his thoughts. “You wouldn’t be jealous?”

Mac shook his head, a sly smile crossing his face. “I know you love her, too. I can see it in your eyes.”

“You’re not ready to get rid of me yet?”

“Fuck no!” Mac looked horrified at the very thought. His reaction lifted Sully’s soul. “I love you! I can’t lose you.”

Sully studied him. “She’d have to agree to our way of life. I can’t stop being who I am for her. Neither can you. And I won’t give you up.”

“I want you to marry her,” Mac said.

Well, that was a surprise. “Really?”

“Yes.” Mac reached out and touched his lover’s knee. “You own me. You’d own her, too. That’s the way it should be. It’s the way I want it.” From the way Mac’s cock started to inflate, Sully knew he told the truth.

“You’ve thought this through.”

“It’s all I can think about.” He met Sully’s gaze again. “Sul, when we agreed to do this, I meant it for life.” He laced his fingers through Sully’s. “I belong to you. When I gave myself to you, it was for as long as you’ll have me. She won’t change that.”

Sully considered it. “Here at home, it would be me over you both.

Boat rules still apply.”

Mac threw his arms around him. “Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me yet. You don’t know she’ll say yes.”

“I feel it, Sul. She wants to be with us as much as we want her here.”

“I’ll take the lead.”

“Okay!”

“Put some shorts on. Leave your collar off.”

Mac’s eyes widened. “Now?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I mean…right now?”

“Now.”

“Are you sure we won’t scare her off?”

“Scare her now or scare her later. I would rather get it out of the way. I don’t want to spend the next few months loving her from a distance to lose her because she leaves and doesn’t know how we feel.” He sighed. “That would hurt too much.”

Mac broadly grinned. “You do love her! I knew it!”

Sully stroked the other man’s face, left his fingers resting on his chin. “I loved you first. I don’t ever want to lose you.”

Mac caught his hand, kissed Sully’s fingers, and nuzzled his hand against his cheek. “I can’t lose you. You’re the first one, the only one who’s ever understood me. The only one I’ve ever trusted.”

There weren’t many truly warm and fuzzy moments in their relationship, but this was one of them. Sully leaned in and kissed him, then hugged him. “We’re in agreement that we have to come first, right? I don’t want to jeopardize what we’ve got over her, no matter how we feel about her.”

Mac hugged him harder. “Absolutely.”

Sully touched his forehead to Mac’s and closed his eyes. “I was afraid you were going to tell me you were leaving.”

Mac harshly laughed. “No fucking way, dude. You’re stuck with me for life. You don’t get rid of me that easily.”

Clarisse had been curled on the sofa, watching TV when the men walked out to the living room. She nervously eyed them as she sat up.

“What’s going on?”

“We need to talk,” Sully said, taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. Mac sat on the coffee table.

“Talk?” Clarisse felt fear settle inside her heart. Here it was. They were going to ask her to leave, or tell her it wasn’t working out, just as she’d started to relax and feel like maybe she could be a part of their lives in some small way. She swallowed back the nasty cold, metallic taste in her throat. A taste she knew well and hadn’t experienced since leaving Bryan.

Fear.

Mac and Sully exchanged a glance. Sully leveled his grey gaze at her. “Do you like living here? Honestly?”

Unable to speak through her fear, she nodded.

“Do you have any intentions to leave?”

She shook her head.

His lips curled into the sexy smile that melted her every time.

“Good, because we don’t want you to leave. In fact, we want you to stay. Permanently.”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “Permanently?” Mac looked desperately hopeful. He nodded. She returned her attention to Sully.

“What do you mean?”

“I know you’re not in love with me. I understand that. I’m not asking for your love, only for your trust. What Mac and I have is different even by unconventional standards. We want to offer you the chance to stay with us permanently.”

She tried to digest that. “Permanently?”

“Yes. Mac has something he needs to tell you.”

Mac looked shocked, like he hadn’t expected Sully to pass the ball to him. He took a deep breath. In a soft voice that didn’t sound like him, he said, “I love you, Clarisse.”

She smiled. “I love you too, Mac.”

“No, I mean I’m in love with you.”

She was sure she didn’t hear him right. “What?”

“He just told me.” Sully waited for her response. She studied his face, then Mac’s, then back to Sully. He didn’t look mad. In fact, truth be told, he looked…

Happy?

He finally spoke again. “We’re a package deal, sweetheart. You get one, you get the other. I’ll never try to force you to love me, no matter how much I love you. I only ask for your trust. In return, I swear to you that we will never let you down.”

Still stunned, Clarisse tried to process Mac’s confession. “You’re in love with me?”

“Yes,” he softly said.

She stared at Sully, unsure what to say.

He spoke. “There’s no reason to give us an answer tonight. We will never force you to do what we do. However, Mac will always be my slave. Nothing changes that unless he decides he doesn’t want it anymore. We love each other, and while we want you to be a part of our lives, we won’t give each other up. If you feel you can accept that, and want to be a part of us, we would welcome you with open arms.”

“I need some time with this.” In reality, she wanted to jump into Mac’s arms and say yes.

“Of course.”

She stared at Sully, then at Mac. “If I said yes, what would that mean?” Her heart thumped in her chest as she met Mac’s hopeful brown gaze. She did love him, and she’d be lying to deny it.

“That’s something we’d have to discuss. Mac will always be mine, for as long as he chooses to be. Whether you can handle being second in his life to me—that’s something only you can decide.”

One of her dreams about the men taking her together came back to her with crystal clarity. She forced herself to speak loudly enough they could hear her. “What if I wanted to be involved with both of you? Or if both of you wanted to be involved with me?”

The men exchanged a glance she couldn’t interpret. “You have to be able to trust me before that can happen,” Sully said. “You and I both know I don’t have that from you yet.”

“I trust you.”

He arched an eyebrow at her.

“I know you won’t hurt me.”

He didn’t speak.

When she finally dropped her gaze, she twisted her hands together in her lap. “I do trust you.”

“Not in the way you’d have to trust me to have a relationship with me like Mac does.”

“What if that’s something I want?”

“Do you think it is?”

She shrugged.

Mac quietly spoke. “There’s the play party this weekend. We could take her. I haven’t cancelled our RSVP yet.”

Sully studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Then I propose this. You come with us to the play party this weekend. Take a chance in our world. See if you really think you can fit in with us before you commit to anything. I promise I won’t injure you, just give you a taste of what it could be like.”

He sat back. “Something else you need to understand, I will not take our relationship to the next level until you can fully trust me and commit to me.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

He leaned forward again, his grey gaze intense. “Mac doesn’t get to fuck you unless I get to first. I won’t fuck you unless or until you’re married to me. I marry for love. And I won’t marry you unless I know you truly love me in return first. Do I make myself clear?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“Honestly, I can’t tell you how this will work between you and Mac. I’m still trying to sort logistics out myself. Let’s table the topic until after the play party this weekend. If it’s still an issue, we can talk more. I will promise you this—you always have a home with us.

Forever. Even if nothing changes in our relationship from the way it is right this minute. The only thing that would make me ask you to leave is if you lied to us or if you got involved with another man. You can stay as long as you are ours and ours alone, even if only in our hearts and not our bed. No strings attached. Understood?”

“Okay.”

Sully stood and left them alone. Mac’s eyes searched her face. “I love you, sweetie. But he’s my life and I can’t lose him. I’m sorry. If you can put up with us, I promise we’ll make you happier than any woman alive.”

“I would be sharing you with him.”

He smiled. “Not really. It’ll be him sharing you with me.”

She shivered, but recognized the feeling as desire, not fear.

He reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I know it’s strange, but think about it. Please? Ask questions. Talk to us.” He leaned in and kissed her, sweetly, lovingly. When he leaned back he wore a smile. “Worth every stroke,” he whispered before standing and following Sully to their bedroom.

Clarisse needed time to process the new information. She spent a long sleepless night replaying the conversation in her mind.

Thought about Mac’s kiss.

Truth be told, she loved Mac, too.

And maybe even Sully.

The next morning, she headed to Uncle Tad’s. As soon as she walked in, he nailed her. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know that look, little girl. You’ve got something percolating in your brain. What’s going on?”

How did she talk about this?

Tad surprised her again. “You’d better not be thinking about moving. You promised me.”

She laughed. No, that wasn’t the problem. “I know. I’m not thinking about moving.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

She blushed, not sure how to approach it. Not sure he’d approve.

When she couldn’t admit it, Tad laughed. “Please tell me one or both of those boys made a pass at you?”

Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at him. “What?”

He grinned. “Oh, come on. They’re both crazy about you, admit it.”

Clarisse remained silent.

Tad leaned in close. “Listen to me. Life’s short. If they love you, then enjoy it and to hell with what anyone else thinks.”

He dropped the topic, to her immense relief. She stayed a little longer, but it was blatantly obvious from his pleased smile and twinkling gaze that he would absolutely be unable to render impartial advice.

Before she returned to the house, she detoured by Howard Park and drove all the way out to the beach. A windy, chilly, overcast weekday meant she had the place to herself. She found a bench facing the Gulf and stared out at the choppy, grey water.

A chance for her dreams to come true.

For her very own happily-ever-after.

Was she brave enough to take it? Could she live that way?

Voluntarily turn herself over to someone else when she’d struggled so hard to be free? What was freedom?

Was it fighting for every dollar she had to earn and living alone and on her own, or was it allowing herself to be taken care of, albeit unconventionally, by two men who would no doubt make sure she never wanted for anything.

Why couldn’t it have just been one of them? Either of them…

She realized what she’d thought. Mac or Sully.

But they weren’t asking her to make a choice. Maybe Sully didn’t love her the way Mac did, but he still wanted her around. That was something, right?

Still confused and unsure what to do, she returned to the Bug and drove home.