“I already know my answer,” Sam announced.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Don’t forget we’ll need a tripod.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Samira squinted as the sun dropped low, zapping her through the kitchen window. She checked the clock. Twenty minutes to eight – shit. She abandoned the remaining dinner dishes in the sink and jogged down the hall and upstairs, through the bedroom and into the bath. Mike was brushing his teeth, and she elbowed him aside.

“Hang on, hang on.” He leaned over to spit and rinsed his brush. “Okay, all yours. Jesus, you’re wound up.” He said it lovingly and tousled the hair she’d spent twenty minutes styling.

“It’s my cinematic debut,” she said, smoothing what he’d mussed. She pulled her makeup bag over and got to work.

“Anything else that needs doing before showtime?”

“Just the last of the dishes.”

“On it.”

He left her alone with her performance anxiety.

She shouldn’t be this nervous. It was only Bern. Well, not only Bern, not like it was only stay-in-with-a-movie-and-pizza date night or something like that. But she knew him, in a way. In a few very, very intimate ways, and she trusted their dynamic.

Only tonight was different. She’d texted him from the car as she and Mike had pulled out of the Best Buy lot.

Just bought a little surprise for tonight.

Sam had waited a patient forty-five minutes while Mike had deliberated the choices, and she’d eyed each one like it was the fourth witness they were going to invite into their scandal.

Bern’s reply had come just after they’d crossed the bridge. Oh yeah? Tell me more.

Well, it’s two parts, really. And one of them is a tripod.

She’d held her breath, butterflies swirling. He hadn’t replied until after they arrived home and Mike had been opening the camera’s box.

Ping.

Sorry. Head exploded.

She’d laughed.

“That him?”

“Yeah. I think we just broke him.”

Mike’s smile had been grim, but not mean. “Long as he appreciates how good he’s got it.”

“He does.”

And even after two encounters – and two weeks of their X-rated pen pal arrangement – the man’s imminent arrival still gave Sam schoolgirl jitters. He was sex and mischief all rolled into one tall, muscular package. She trusted him with a very big secret, one that could hurt her and Mike much worse than him, should it get out. It gave him actual power. And she liked it.

She finished her makeup, head filling up with ideas about what the camera might catch tonight. She eyed it as she walked through the bedroom, making a mental note to not leave it perched on the tripod like that when the cleaning lady was due to come. Like she hasn’t seen weirder shit. Well, maybe not weirder than the shit she might discover if she actually watched the video.

Everything felt different this evening, the stakes higher. There was the camera, but there was more. She could sense it.

All this time, Sam had taken her own pleasure from fulfilling two men’s wishes, but she was growing curious about things that neither of them had yet owned. It felt as though it was only a matter of time before Mike would take a more active role – if nothing else, masturbating while he watched her and Bern together. Given the chance, maybe their arrangement might evolve into an actual three-way, and maybe Mike would let Bern see exactly how blurry the edges of his kink were, its humiliation aspects drawing the two men closer. Would Bern want to see what Sam had – Mike lapping away what he’d left on her skin? Could he take his role that far, or were there limits to his showmanship?

She couldn’t guess, but boundaries were forming, ripe for fucking with. She’d fantasized about the next obvious step, about Bern looking Mike right in the eye and saying, “Your wife looks good getting fucked by a real man, doesn’t she?” In her mind, Mike didn’t reply, and Bern went on. “I can’t help but feel bad she’s cheating on you with me… Go ahead and rub one out. Watching us is probably hotter than anything you’ve managed with her.”

She wouldn’t be surprised if Bern took them there. He was quickly becoming the conductor in these encounters, and she bet he’d only grow bolder with time. He’d settled capably into his role as wife-defiling alpha male, and seemed poised to take a more active approach to the defiling of Mike – in orders and cruel words, if not physical contact.

She hoped he would. She wanted Mike drawn into the encounters as a whole body, not just a set of eyes. Tonight he might hold the camera. Soon, perhaps, he’d let Bern see how far his kink drew him into its shadows, let him watch that first step of the reclaiming, as he cleaned away the offense. And she hoped they’d take it even further, in time. She wanted to watch those two strong bodies, so adept at pleasing her, inching closer and closer, the darker these games grew. Mike had already tasted Bern on her skin. Would he taste the man himself? Would Bern let him —

The doorbell rang, putting an end to her theorizing and announcing the handing over of supremacy from one man to another. She pecked Mike on the cheek as they passed on the stairs – her heading for the front, him to his office, where he’d hide until he was ready to walk in on them.

She waited until he was out of sight, then opened the door.

Christ, this man floored her. That familiar, sly smile had her heart thumping, skin heating. Funny how having an infatuation with one man didn’t diminish her love and attraction for another. Sam was fast becoming a monogamist’s nightmare.

“Hey.” Bern shut the door behind him and leaned in to kiss her cheek.

She accepted it with a squeeze of his shoulder. “Hey yourself. Good to see you. In person, that is.”

He gave her a thorough looking-over. “Not half as good as seeing you.”

“Wine?” she asked, leading him to the kitchen.

“If you’re having some.”

“I am.”

Bern watched as she opened the bottle. “I make you nervous, still?”

“Barely at all,” she said, smiling. In fact, this was her first drink of the night, a testament to her growing comfort. “And only nervous in good ways.” She poured two measures of red and they toasted.

“I could always take or leave wine before I met you,” he said, studying his glass. “Now I catch myself craving it.”

She grinned. “That’s because it tastes like foreplay.”

He laughed. As his smile faded, his eyes narrowed with a thought. “So I’ve been here twice now. And you keep asking me back.”

Sam spoke quietly, in case Mike was in the mood to keep the game’s infrastructure hidden. “We have indeed.”

“So is what I’ve been doing working for you? Both of you? Need me to be more of a dick, less of a dick, anything like that?”

“I think you’ve been a perfect dick, so far. And I hope you’ll be able to keep it up when he joins us.”

“That happening tonight?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“And I should just keep up the current dick levels?”

She laughed. “Or maybe even ramp it up further, if you could. I mean, be how you have been toward me, but you really can’t be too cocky and mean toward him, I don’t think.”

“He really likes that, huh?”

She grinned. “Oh yeah, he loves it.”

The pensiveness left his face and he returned her smile. “Good. And you’re fine with it?”

“Definitely. We invited you over to be a show-off and an asshole, so, by all means.” She studied him with her eyes narrowed, full to the brim with mischief.

“Yeah?”

“Lights, camera, action, tonight.”

She watched Bern’s expression change. He took another sip, eyes unfocused.

Their arrangement was like a big game of kinky hot potato, power getting passed among the three of them. Right now it was hers, and it felt good, like slipping into a killer dress. She’d never felt this sexy before in her life. And though she’d never have the body of a twentysomething again, at thirty-six she had two men panting at her feet and the experience to know what to do with them.