happen—it happened to Aaron on occasion—but no way in hell was it going to happen because I’d neglected him.
So as far as I was concerned, I didn’t just have two submissives when we played. I had two submissives. I’d need to talk about that with Aaron once he was awake, but I suspected he wouldn’t object.
The thing was, being one submissive’s Dom was a lot of pressure. I had to be vigilant about his mental, physical, and emotional states, especially when he started getting into subspace. Getting him into, through, and out of subspace was mentally and physically demanding for me. I loved it, of course, but it was taxing.
And I couldn’t help but wonder:
Was I enough for both of them?
The whole reason we’d brought in Kelly in the first place had been because I couldn’t meet one of Aaron’s needs. Kelly filled that gap nicely, but it had taken twenty years for us to even realize it existed. I’d thought we’d have someone who just came over for some kinky fun, and that was the end of it. In practice, it wasn’t so simple, and it was bizarre to think I’d ever thought it would be. The way we were right now—it made sense. It worked.
But it was intimidating. I didn’t have a submissive and a play partner. I had two submissives. Kelly wasn’t a 24/7 sub like Aaron, and we didn’t live together, but he was here more and more. I cared about him—not just as my sub, but as my friend. I wanted to fulfill his needs as much as he fulfilled Aaron’s.
So how long before there was something Kelly needed that I couldn’t give him?
I closed my eyes and exhaled into the stillness.
I’m barely enough for one submissive.
How do I pull it off with two?
Twenty-Eight
Aaron
For fuck’s sake. It’s six-thirty already?
I fumbled around for my phone and grumpily jabbed the button to snooze the alarm. That alone was enough to wake me up—moving around jarred muscles that were achy and sore from last night, which was to say nothing of the skin on my ass and shoulders. And, well, my ass—Will loved fucking me hard after I’d had my ass beaten, and I’d be feeling it all day today.
I grinned into my pillow. Sitting in the hard benches in the courtroom gallery today wouldn’t be the most pleasant thing in the world, but it was a small price to pay for the catharsis of nights like last night. God, I owed Kelly and Will so big. Kelly for beating the hell out of me. Will for letting him—for ordering him to—before he finished me off with a good hard fuck.
My alarm went off again. This time, I shut it off. I needed to be at the courthouse by eight, so I couldn’t keep hitting the snooze button as much as I would’ve liked. Being an adult was stupid.
Indulging in a pathetic groan, I pulled my aching body out of bed. Since Will was still asleep and we had blackout curtains on the windows, I used my phone’s flashlight app pointed at the floor to navigate from the bed to the bathroom. Once the door was shut, I flicked on the light and inspected my shoulders in the mirror. I couldn’t help grinning—Kelly had done a hell of a job. The sight of all those welts—some of which were faintly bruised—made me shiver, remembering how high he’d had me flying.
There were people in my world who would never understand why I loved pain the way I did. People who could never begin to comprehend how I could simultaneously respond to it the way anyone would—crying out, pulling away—and beg for more.
But Will understood. Kelly understood. Between them, I was pretty sure I was the luckiest masochist on the planet.
And we haven’t even gotten to the really good pain yet.
I shivered again.
Taking a shower was an exercise in extreme caution. I leaned forward when I washed my hair, not letting the water or soap slide down my back. My ass was bruised all to hell, but the skin wasn’t raw, so that was fine. My shoulders? Fuck. There was no completely avoiding that stinging contact, but I did my level best because that wasn’t a type of pain I enjoyed. By the time I got out, I was wide awake, that was for sure.
In our walk-in closet, I shut the door, flicked on the light, and got dressed as quietly as I could. Then I turned off the light,