I think maybe I’m ready to try it again. If he’s still interested, and if we can get the rules exactly right.

For all her optimism, Sam had been surprised.

Bern had been interested. Cautious but intrigued, and still single.

The cardinal rule was that all three of them needed to be present for any encounters that might happen, going forward. Sam had no issue with that, since the thing that excited her most was having both of their bodies there with her.

At first, the bulk of the control had been ceded to Mike – the tone of their encounters had been his to dictate, since he’d been the one violated by Sam and Bern’s missteps. The reprised weekly meet-ups had felt much like their initial dates, to start – cuckolding was the driving dynamic once more, though Mike didn’t pretend to catch them, the way he had at the start. He mostly watched, sometimes masturbated, always reclaimed Sam after Bern left, but didn’t join in at first. He was stronger in his role than he had been before – less humiliated and helpless, and far more openly excited by watching them. Bossier, too – probably a touch eager to keep his alpha status clear this time around. Sam loved the change, loved this gruff new version of Mike more than the pathetic one he used to favor. He seemed like the conductor of his desires now, not merely a passive audience.

Sam and Bern kept their chemistry overtly physical these days, and their text and e-mail exchanges relegated to planning purposes only. For now. She imagined that might change, with time and trust, but the loss of those fun, dirty messages was a tiny price to pay to have him back in their lives, and their bed. Her crush was still there, but that summer’s scare had been so painful, she felt no temptation to lose track of her heart that way again.

In time, as the cuckolding games went on and Mike’s confidence grew, he’d proposed a change. They ought to switch who called the shots from week to week, he’d suggested, and Sam and Bern agreed.

Bern’s nights to direct looked much like Mike’s, though he favored the presence of the camera or a mirror, naturally. He liked sometimes for Sam and Mike to watch him masturbate while they had sex with each other. He liked to watch them, she thought. He seemed to find it fascinating in some way, if not as electric as being the show, himself. Ever eager to please, he often got caught up in Sam’s fantasies by the end of his evenings and made sure she got to feel the both of them against her in the finale.

Of the three of them, it was Sam who pushed the most boundaries this time around.

Back in the spring, when this had all begun, she’d always imagined the arrangement was a gift she’d be giving her husband – orchestrated with enthusiasm, but ultimately for him. She’d never have guessed she’d find appetites of her own inside it. Never have imagined she’d fight to keep this in their lives, or guessed she’d feel the power she did, holding sway over them.

She eyed Mike, who was transfixed by the game. She eyed Bern, also distracted, though in time his gaze swiveled to catch hers. She smiled, and he returned it. A glance at the screen told her it was nearly the end of the fourth quarter, and that the Steelers were up by thirteen, their victory a foregone conclusion. It was time to shift this easy, platonic afternoon into a racier gear.

She curled her finger at Bern, and his eyebrows rose, smile turning mischievous. Sam patted the couch cushion beside her and he got up, skirting the coffee table to take a seat. She loved the way his weight dipped her cushion, and how she could already feel his heat. Feel the heat of both their strong bodies, and her own temperature rising.

Mike had lost interest in the game, studying her now.

“It’s your night,” Bern murmured, scooting closer. Sam’s back was half to him, her legs still draped over Mike’s lap, and he ran a slow palm down her arm, raising goose bumps even through her thick sweater. “What are you in the mood for?”

She craned her neck to regard his face and eased the hat from his hair. She knew every strand, it seemed, black and silver alike. “What a very good question.” And one she had answers for. She wanted lots of things tonight. Wanted their two laboring bodies, first and foremost, but more. Since that punch had been thrown, since this affair had been destroyed and then resurrected, Mike and Bern had reeled back their physical contact. So much of it had been tied into Mike’s desire for humiliation, and that had taken a backseat in their reimagined games, as his role had become more assertive, dominant, even.

“There’s something I’ve been missing,” Sam said, looking at each of them in turn. “And maybe its time has passed, or maybe it’d have to be worked up to gradually, but I miss when you two… touch each other. In any way, really,” she added quickly. “It doesn’t have to be hard-core, like it was, but just a little something.” She’d not have come out and asked for this back in the spring and summer, even though she herself had been happy to exit her comfort zone for both their desires – her shyness about being filmed, for Bern, and the entire experiment to begin with, for her husband. But she had distinct wants of her own now, and the balls to name them.

“Like what?” Mike asked, his voice soft and receptive.

“Just about anything.” She gave the scene some thought. She wanted lots of things she didn’t think they’d be ready for – to watch them kiss, and more – but less intense stuff as well. “If one of you is taking me, and the other’s watching, or lying on my other side, it’d be hot to see your hands on the other guy’s hip or back, sort of urging him, maybe. Just your hands on each other, in any way you’re okay with. If you’re okay with it,” she added, glancing at each of them.

“It’s your night,” Bern said again with a smile. “Whatever gets you hot.”

Mike was slower to reply, but she could tell from his tone that he knew his boundaries and was game to push them. “I’d be okay with it. With anything we’ve done in the past, but not much further.”

Her heart leapt, and in the background the football fans roared their approval – surely of a game-clinching play, but to Sam it felt like she’d just triumphed, herself. How many times had she replayed those memories of Mike taking Bern in his mouth, these past months? Too many to count.

Sam looked to Mike, leaned in to kiss him. He accepted it hungrily and tugged her closer. She straddled his lap and got lost in this mouth she knew so well, excited and proud to feel her other lover’s eyes on them – and then his hand. Bern’s heavy palm stroked her back and neck, and she felt the elastic slide free from her ponytail. Soon she’d feel more – the bare, hot skin of both of these men against her, the flex of their needy bodies, the smell of their sweat as the sex turned the December chill into a figment of their imaginations.

As hot as Mike’s mouth or Bern’s hand was the tantalizing unknown of whatever might come after they went upstairs, when Sam let her desires direct these two men – everything in store for her tonight. They hadn’t ruined it back in July. Not through Sam and Bern’s fuckup, not by Mike’s hand when he’d thrown that punch. They’d knocked it down, but in the end, all the bricks had remained, and a foundation of symbiotic need and desire, and they’d built something familiar, something similar but also entirely new, in its place.

Sam broke her lips from Mike’s, breathing hard, feeling hot and tight and needy in the darkest shadows of her body. “Let’s go upstairs,” she told him, and let her hungry stare echo it at Bern.

Bern nodded and stood. “I’ll be right up.” And he disappeared to do as he always did now – to make a stop in the downstairs bathroom so that Mike and Sam could enter the bedroom together, first. Whether that little ritual symbolized his deference, or Mike’s primacy, or some other subtle acknowledgment that he was still the guest in these matters, she wasn’t entirely sure. But it felt right, and it spoke to that intuition he’d always possessed.