Hold Me Harder Read online

  “He sent me a note to come up to the cabin. I assumed…” She gazed off into the middle distance. “I don’t know what I assumed. So many things.”

  “I knew you were looking queasy at the barbeque. I thought it was all the s’mores.”

  Natalie snorted and looked up at him, at the gentle tease in his eyes, and his lopsided smile. He always used humor to diffuse her tension in just the right way.

  “We’re only at the discussing potentials stage,” he assured her. When she nodded again, he added, “I’m sorry he left you to fill in the blanks. Not cool.”

  Or maybe Javier expected her to know he’d never do anything to hurt her, would never compromise her in any way. She had eight years of knowledge of him to back the assumption. He’d shown only grace, no rancor, when he let her walk away from him, contrary to his own desires. Because she’d wanted it.

  She shook her head at her own irrational spiral. “It’s not entirely his fault,” she said. “You’re right, I made assumptions. But, Ryan…” Natalie pressed her lips together, unsure how to say more without hurting him all over again.

  “Just wait. Don’t say anything.” He towed her through a crunchy patch of fallen needles under a towering pine. The moon shone through the trees in bright patches, but the illumination didn’t reach them this deep under the canopy. Facing uphill, he leaned against the rough bark of the trunk and pulled her between his braced legs, his hands cupping her bottom. “Two things,” he said, touching his nose to hers. “First—” He kissed her again, this time a tender outpouring of his heart that warmed her to the soles of her feet. “I’m so sorry I scared you, Nat. I never, never meant to.”

  “I know,” she whispered. It should have been a small wound, nothing she couldn’t deal with if she had been willing to talk.

  “Second, the ménage. We can’t even contemplate this without trust and communication. If you aren’t ready, say so. At any time. I told him what I told you: I’m not going to have a hand in pressuring you into anything. Shit, I’m not even sure I can handle it.” He ran tender fingers along her cheek, and Natalie bent her head into his palm, her throat too full to respond beyond a gruff thank you.

  He slid his hands down her back and held her close. “Do you know what he’s got in mind?”

  “Based on what little he said this morning, I have the gist. Some sort of poly relationship, or a sub-share. God, I sound like an Uber car or something.”

  Ryan laughed quietly. “Yes and no. Right now, he’s proposed more of a mentorship. Mostly it’ll be just you and me, since he’s way out here. Sometimes we’ll all be together. I gather he gets to Seattle on occasion, and if we feel like coming here, this place ain’t bad. For the wild.” He kissed her on one corner of her mouth. “Sometimes he’ll get you to himself.” He kissed the opposite corner. “If I don’t send a goon squad to tie him up and drop him in that lake,” he added under his breath.

  “Ryan! Seriously,” Natalie said, taking fistfuls of his shirt. “This is part of what I’m worried about. What’s to keep you guys from killing each other?”

  He took her face between his hands and brushed both thumbs over her cheeks. His eyes were dark, his expression sober. “It’s only going to work if we keep the lines of communication open, Nat. You and I have some serious work to do, but it can’t be any other way. That means when you’re upset, no shutting down, no running away. The same will go for your cowboy and me. You won’t be in the middle of that.”

  She nodded, but in an absent sort of way. Two dominant men. It was one thing to communicate, and another thing entirely to expect they could set aside their natural tendencies and work together in a sexual relationship.

  “Hey, Nat,” Ryan said, his voice taking on a delectable edge she was already responsive to. “Javier and I will have to work out our side of this. That’s partly what tonight’s about. If we can get past step one, and if we get through whatever comes next without wounded feelings, we’ll all sit down and make sure the ground rules are clear before we move forward. Otherwise, this isn’t happening. It’s too risky for you. Javier and I agree on that much.”

  Her nod was more resolute this time, and her heart was growing precariously light. “Okay. Better communication. I promise.”

  “Perfect.” He kissed her again, gentle still, but with a touch more fire. She was breathless when he said, “We should go. Your guy is impatient as all hell. Thinks he’s royalty or something.”

  Natalie chuckled. “He might be. I think there’s some Duque de Granada history somewhere.”

  “Well, then, we’d better not keep the bastard waiting.” Ryan gathered her hair into a tail with a twist of his wrist and eased down, raising her chin. “Not long, anyway.” Then he tossed away whatever restraint he’d been employing. His half-day whiskers scoured her as his lips trailed over her cheeks, down her neck. He spun them around and pinned her hands overhead against the tree, scoring her wrists against the deep-grooved bark of the ponderosa. There was nothing gentle about him now as he palmed her breast, rolled and tugged her nipple the way he knew she loved, nipped her lips, mixing the sharp edges of his teeth with the warm softness of his tongue. A tantalizing promise of life on the uncivilized edge.

  Natalie began to reach for the velvety, peaceful blank. Maybe she should have told him Javier never let her do that.

  Not long after, Natalie squeezed her eyes closed against the sudden brightness of the porch light illuminating the front of a cabin. The door flew open, and she had a vague sense of herself as a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, being towed inside by a string around her ankle.

  “Well, I see you’ve gotten a head start.”

  Natalie blinked until Javier came into view, sprawled in a wide leather club chair, his brows slashing low over the bridge of his nose.

  “I just talked to her,” Ryan said. “And kissed her the way I’ve done a thousand times.”

  “More than that.” Javier’s black scowl reached past her shoulder. “You let her start to fly.”

  “I didn’t let her do anything. She just…poof.”

  Javier clicked his tongue, the sound suffused with the kind of disappointment that filled her with a warmth she’d tried to forget. “I suppose we can conclude she’s not holding your little stunt with the rent-a-submissive against you any longer,” he said, pushing up from his chair. Ryan stayed at her back, warm and solid. “Natalie,” Javier said, his familiar rough-skinned fingers rubbing up the underside of her arm.

  “I’m right here,” she said. He drew the backs of his fingers across her cheek, focusing her attention. She looked into his stern face, watched tense lines evaporate.

  “Are you misbehaving, pequeña?”

  “Maybe.” Natalie turned her head. He wouldn’t appreciate her amusement. She eased away from the bulwark of Ryan’s front.

  “Lesson one, cabrón. She’s far out of practice. I think we can assume she’s agreeable to this arrangement for tonight, but even without the prospect of bondage or pain, she’s vulnerable. She’ll let herself skip to subspace easily enough.”

  Natalie turned her head, found Ryan in a familiar stance, hands on his hips, looking both annoyed and concerned. “Don’t be exasperated, babe,” she said. “It’s a good thing.”

  His fingers raked through his hair, and seeing him disconcerted intensified her desire to misbehave in ways certain to earn a swift, decisive response. She had whipsawed from unsure to all-in. Now she wanted nothing more than for Ryan to play out all the fantasies he’d tempted her with, and more.

  Javier urged her down into his abandoned chair and squatted at her knees. “I can see your gears turning, pequeña. Can I get you something?”

  She looked between her men, the rugged one and the polished one. “I’m good,” she said, a smile twitching her lips. Nerves layered over enthusiasm, which sat on top of the most carnal of feelings, a sensual onslaught aching in her breasts and between her legs.

  Javier crossed the room, reached into a cabinet, and came out wit
h a bottle of Gran Patrón. He poured two glasses and handed one to Ryan. “Have a seat,” he said, tilting his glass at the sofa across from the chair. Ryan retreated, and Javier jostled Natalie about until he was sitting beneath her on the chair. She relaxed against him and enjoyed the feel of his calloused fingers rasping over her arm, giving her continual bursts of goose bumps.

  “So.” Ryan took a hefty swig from his glass, then sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “What are we doing? You left Nat in the dark. It’s time for full disclosure.”

  There was a heavy pause as Javier absorbed Ryan’s accusation. “If there are to be three of us in this relationship, Natalie has to know what to expect from each of us. Consistency will make it easier for all of us. I handle her with strict care, so if you intend to behave in a playful way, it won’t work, because, cabrón, I am not changing.”

  Ryan’s expression turned mutinous for a brief moment before he replied, “I won’t be playful when it matters, I can assure you. But I’m not you. Natalie and I have our own way. These things are negotiated, in my experience, not declared.”

  “I believe I can speak for myself, boys,” Natalie said with her own spike of annoyance, dissipating the last of the lovely haze of her interlude with Ryan. She stared hard, first at him, then at Javier. He dropped a baleful gaze on her. She sat up and pulled the tumbler from his hand, took a careful sip, and then grimaced as the tequila burned down her throat. “Okay, expectations.”

  “Expectations and consent, cariño. Nothing can happen without your consent.”

  She took a deep breath. “The way I see it, I have no secrets left. You apparently both understand me better than I understand myself.”

  “That’s not consent, though,” Javier said. “Consent involves trust, and a willingness to submit to not one, but two doms.”

  Natalie thought about it for a long moment, but found herself at peace with that aspect of their situation. “Ryan and I will find our way through it, Javier. Like a new couple.”

  “I agree, but as this is also a mentorship, there must be common rules.” His fingers had been exploring places he knew would make her squirm, and now they spidered above her knee, dragging her skirt upward. “He has to be willing to learn, and you have to be willing to be the teaching tool.”

  She nodded. “I’m willing.”

  She looked to Ryan, confirming their conversation under the tree. But rather than agreeable, she found him staring fixedly at Javier’s fingers playing between her legs, his body tense, as if balanced on a pincushion. For her part, the idea of him watching Javier play with her had the same effect as before. A dark, inexorable pleasure moved inside her like a tide.

  Still, Ryan looked to be having second thoughts. “Babe?” Natalie asked softly.

  As if she’d bumped him out of a daze, he sat back and took another deep pull of his drink.

  In that fraught moment, she knew without a doubt she wanted this. And that she could never choose between them. If their arrangement didn’t work, she’d have to say good-bye to them both.

  Ryan met her eye. “I’m on board.”

  Natalie slumped back against Javier’s chest. “Relax, cariño. It’s going to be fine.” He nipped the side of her neck and down, to the firm muscle atop her shoulder. She tipped her head and the warmth of his tequila-laced breath washed over her, taking her to old, familiar places as he slipped a finger under the edge of her panties, dipped into her slick heat. “I’ll tell you one thing, cabrón. Knowing you are watching certainly arouses her.”

  As did Javier talking about it.

  Ryan glanced down, his eyelids half-mast, his expression gone flat, almost disinterested, and yet…not. When he looked back up, Natalie recognized what she had never seen. He was settling into dominant headspace.

  Her skin crackled and seethed, sparks running just under the surface. Javier’s fingers roamed, and Natalie squirmed under the dueling demands for her attention. Without speaking a word, Ryan delivered a message to her over the rim of his glass—he’d turn the tables soon enough.

  She couldn’t control her small shiver as the submissive inside her writhed with an itch so deep, Natalie knew scratching it would expose her darkest core. Perhaps she would emerge something closer to her essence, someone who could embrace her nature rather than hide it away. Javier had always encouraged her, and Ryan…well, she was foolish to have slammed the door on him. He spun her out in wholly different ways.

  Her alpha side whispered, Take it. Take it all.

  Javier bolted back his tequila. “Stand up, pequeña,” he said, his Patrón-scoured voice leaving no room for disobedience. Natalie stood before him on legs like a marionette’s, stiff and wooden, yet hinged and unstable. Javier touched a finger to her jaw. “You aren’t to take your eyes from me unless I allow you to look away, Natalie. Don’t look to him for approval, do you understand?”

  The muscles behind her eyes strained as she forced them to stay fixed on him. “Yes, Javier,” she whispered. But there remained a sliver of her mind aware of the force pressing on her from behind. Of Ryan’s palpable presence.

  “Everything off,” Javier said.

  The simple directive speared through her like a blade, left her hot, liquid, and entirely focused. She toed off her boots and pulled her shirt over her head, her gaze locked on Javier, alert for any signals he might send. He watched her through eyes gone dark as she shimmied out of her skirt and dropped her bra and panties on top.

  Javier’s gaze trailed over her, tangible as a finger, the lines he drew from point to point buzzing and vibrant on her skin. He put down his glass and beckoned her toward him. “Come closer, pequeña.”

  Natalie stepped between his knees, and he skimmed his palm over her contour, from her ribs inward along the curve of her waist, out again over her hip, down the length of her thigh. “I call her mi pequeña so she knows her place. My little one,” he said, ostensibly to Ryan. He drew a figure eight around her breasts, careful to only outline them. “So pale. Do you never get outside anymore?”

  “No, Javier.” This was how it began, the exquisite stretching of her nerves. He would pull and release until she frayed, until he could snap her with no more than a whisper of touch. Or wind her tighter still.

  “My boots, pequeña, and my shirt,” he said.

  She dropped to her knees. How many times had she done this, knelt at his feet to remove his boots? She set each one neatly aside as he required, then stood over him to unbutton his shirt. She pushed it open, exposing his hewn angles and the scars and marks on his burnished skin. She ran her finger over the one she could never leave alone, the silver mark where a brand had accidentally skipped across the right side of his belly. Javier grabbed her wrist and lifted her hand off him. “I didn’t tell you that you could touch me, pequeña.”

  Her ears hummed. She hadn’t seen Javier deep in dominant mode for more than a year. Nothing he’d done since she’d arrived on the ranch this weekend came close to matching this, but her old associations didn’t fail her. She felt her body finding its proper slot as her mind sought the yin to his yang.

  He let go of her wrist and jerked his chin, gesturing across the room. “Now his.”

  Natalie’s stomach filled with swirling heat, and she turned to face Ryan, who watched her with a stern expression. She’d never seen his inner Dom come out before, and now she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He breathed slowly, his hands dangling limp between his thighs. Javier was wrong about one thing. Ryan had plenty of self-control.

  She unlaced his boots and set them aside, then stood and reached for his shirt. But the brittle look in his eye stopped her cold. He reached to caress her breast, perhaps in reassurance, as his gaze moved past her waist. “I’m not sure what the point is.”

  “She wants to be of help,” Javier said from behind her.

  After a long pause, Ryan said, “No, I’ll leave my shirt on. Kneel down, Natalie. Put your head on the floor, hands next to your knees.”

  Her full name comi
ng from between his lips gave her pause, but when he looked up, his eyes the hard blue of lapis, she did as she was told.

  It felt like several minutes before Ryan shifted above her, before his finger touched the lowest point of her spine. “I haven’t seen you like this before,” he said, tracing her backbone, knob to knob. “You’re the shape of a heart from up here, did you know that?” His hands swept up and out over the contours of her bottom, and then inward to span her waist. “And there’s a perfect canvas here for a handprint.” He didn’t touch her, but she felt the heat of his palm where it hovered over her skin, anticipation making the fine hairs rise all over her body.

  Natalie’s eyes slid closed. Please, she begged in silence as she ground the backs of her wrists into the tight-woven carpet, a physical cue to keep still.

  But Ryan shifted again, and the warmth disappeared. Slow footsteps came from behind her, accompanied by the sound of leather hissing through belt loops. “I’d never quite thought of it that way before, but you’re right, cabrón.” Javier sounded deceptively conversational. “From here, I’ve always seen more of a ripe, juicy pear.”

  Something brushed between her legs—a finger, or the dangling end of a belt—a bare, maddening touch. Her temperature spiked as she absorbed a wave of need so deep it made her moan. She couldn’t stop herself. She inverted her spine, a little dip of invitation.

  “Do you see? She is dangerously responsive,” Javier said. Ryan grunted in reply. “The inexperienced dominant finds himself a slave to the inflicting of physical pain, to see the evidence of his control. I find the pain originating here far more gratifying,” he said, tapping the side of Natalie’s head. “To make her ache from what I’m not doing, what I might not do at all. How I might leave her.” His belt slithered across her back. “Shining bright with pain, or languid and replete. Or untouched and sobbing with want.”

  Natalie knew his philosophy by experience, but to have it so baldly stated, to hear the arousal in his voice as he described it…