on there? Had he been trying to tell me—the way we’d promised to tell each other—that other feelings were creeping in?
I rubbed my eyes, and that same old question that had been bothering me from the start hammered at my temples like a hangover:
If Kelly is what Aaron has been missing…
Then where do I fit in?
Maybe I needed to talk to someone, because I was going to drive myself insane if I tried to sort this out in my own head.
The logical choice was to talk to Aaron. Or Kelly. Or both.
But I wasn’t feeling particularly logical today. I needed an uninvested third party.
Fortunately, I knew just who to call.
“I’m not interrupting, am I?”
Max closed his laptop and put it aside. “Not at all. Sit down.”
I took a seat beside him by the Bold Brew fireplace. The fire wasn’t going today—the summer was fading, but it wasn’t quite that cold out yet.
Cradling my coffee between my hands, I sighed. “I need some advice.”
“About your third?”
I arched an eyebrow. “How’d you guess?”
Max smiled knowingly. “When I saw you hanging out with him here…” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Something about the way you were interacting…”
I had no idea what to say to that.
He went on, “I could be wrong. But maybe not? Since apparently the problem relates to him?”
“Maybe.” I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “The thing is, I’m worried things might be a bit… I don’t know. A bit too intense with him?”
Max tilted his head. “In terms of kink? Or…?”
“I…” I had to think about that. Everything we did with Kelly was (theoretically) tied to kink, but was it in practice? Fuck, what were we doing? “As far as kink, we’ve only just started getting into the kind of play that we needed him for in the first place.”
Max nodded. “Taking it slow. Understandable.”
“Right. But the thing is…” I stared at the floor. I had no idea how to explain it, so I just started at the beginning and hoped for the best. I filled him in on how things had progressed, the things we’d done with Kelly in and out of the bedroom, and where we were now. “The night Kelly brought out the single tail, that was hot as hell. But it was…” I moistened my lips. “I mean, it was definitely more pain than I could give Aaron. Comfortably, anyway. And he loved it.” I laughed quietly. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem that way in the moment—it’s still pain, you know? He always seems like he’s fucking miserable, but then I’ll see it on his face that he’s loving it. And afterward?” I exhaled. “Afterward, he’s flying.”
“You’re a lucky man,” Max said. “A masochist that responsive…”
I looked at him through my lashes. “Except I’m not the one giving him that pain. I can’t.”
“No, but you enjoy seeing him that happy, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. But I…” I chewed my lip, struggling to find the words. “The thing is, we did some lighter pain play last night. Just some wax. And I kind of felt the same way I did the night Kelly used the single tail. Like I’d convinced myself it didn’t bother me to watch someone do that to Aaron, but now…” I swallowed hard. “Now I think it does.”
Max studied me intently. “Which part?”
“I’m not even sure. It’s not like I want to stop him from hurting Aaron. I know it’s what Aaron wants and needs. But I feel kind of…”
“Left out?”
My first instinct was to say that didn’t fit. I was hardly left out when I was literally fucking my husband during their pain play. At the same time, though, I couldn’t quite argue with him. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
Max watched me for a long moment. “Maybe it bothers you because you’ve got more feelings for the other submissive than you set out to.”
I blinked. “What?”
That knowing smile came back, though it seemed sympathetic, not smug or cocky. He shifted in his chair and pressed his elbow into the armrest as he looked right at me. “What you’re doing requires a lot of trust, and a certain amount of intimacy comes with the territory. Is it possible that there’s more intimacy than you’re comfortable with? That when you watch Kelly hurt Aaron, you want to stop the scene not to protect Aaron or because you can’t handle seeing him in pain, but because you’re watching the two of them form a stronger bond than you thought they would?”