No Good Deed - Marie Sexton Page 0,24

the door. He turned back to Charlie with a grin, gesturing toward the bedroom. “Sure you don’t need a third?”

Charlie laughed. “Positive. Go home and harass your husband.”

Gray’s smile was almost shy. It made him look five years younger. “Now that you mention it, I think I will.”

Charlie closed the door behind him, locking it this time, and returned to the bedroom to find Jonas sitting up in bed, chewing a cuticle.

“Déjà vu, huh?” Charlie said.

Jonas frowned. “We’ll have to deal with him eventually.”

“We will.” Charlie climbed onto the bed and kissed him. “But it doesn’t have to be today.”

Chapter 8

They lounged in bed most of the morning before wandering into the kitchen for food. They spent the day doing an odd sort of dance, trying to silently negotiate the terms of their new arrangement. Jonas was all flirtatious glances and outright sexual propositions, always with a laughing look in his eyes, as if daring Charlie to take him up on them. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed so much.

“We have six lost years to make up for,” Jonas said to him at one point. “I figure that means at least twice a day for a while.”

Charlie wasn’t opposed by any means, but for the first time in ages, he had a partner whose preferences were somewhat unknown to him. He’d always thought of Jonas as a masochist because he’d been partnered with Gray, who was the very definition of a nonpredatory sexual sadist. But Jonas had told Charlie that he’d never been into pain. He had a high threshold, but it didn’t turn him on. He’d deliberately left the BDSM scene in his rearview six years earlier and apparently hadn’t ever ventured back in until now. And yet, he’d told Charlie he was sick of vanilla sex.

There was a whole world of possibilities between “vanilla” and sexual masochism.

That afternoon, Jonas climbed into Charlie’s lap as he sat on the couch. He kissed Charlie hungrily, rubbing and dry-humping against him, until they were both breathless.

“Please,” Jonas finally whispered. “Tell me what I need to do to get you back into bed. Do you need me to beg? Do you want me to grovel? To call you sir?”

Charlie definitely didn’t need him groveling. He’d had more than enough of that with Tad, who hadn’t been able to achieve arousal at all without a fair amount of humiliation first. Instead, Charlie led Jonas into the bedroom, to the armoire in the corner. He opened it, revealing all its contents.

“Tell me what exactly you’re into.”

The main compartment in the upper half was mostly devoted to pain. Jonas eyed it warily. He touched one of the crops. “I have mixed feeling about these.”

“You said you don’t enjoy pain.”

Jonas nodded. “The thing is, when I’m really caught up in the sex, I don’t mind it. I don’t even notice it. Which is kind of how it worked before.” He blushed as he said this. “But now, seeing these…” He shook his head, blushing even more, but apparently not wanting to say what he felt.

Charlie hazarded a guess. “They remind you of Gray.”

Jonas nodded. “I don’t know if we ever had sex without a flog or a crop involved. And I really don’t want to think of him.”

Thank goodness for that. Charlie wouldn’t have been able to handle it if Jonas was still daydreaming of Gray. “Fair enough,” Charlie said. “What about the rest?”

The top shelf of the armoire held several zippered black cases. Jonas took one down and opened it to reveal the slender set of silver rods inside. He gulped. “Are these for sounding?”

“They are.” He tried to judge the expression on Jonas’s face. It wasn’t encouraging. “You ever tried it?”

Jonas shook his head. “No. What’s it like?”

Charlie considered. “It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it’s amazing.”

Jonas contemplated the case another second or two before closing it again. “I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

That meant he was open to the possibility at some point down the road, but he wasn’t about to be pressured into anything he wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with. Charlie liked that.

Jonas touched a bundle of rope and leather. “What’s this?”

“A sex swing. It used to be Phil’s. Did you ever see his dungeon?”

“Once.”

“Well, he got rid of just about everything he had in that room. I took the swing, but there’s no place in my house to hang it.” He sure couldn’t have it in the living room or the kitchen or