He thanked the waitress who brought him a longneck. He didn’t dare order a Scotch. He doubted what they would bring him here would even vaguely resemble Scotch, though he passed a glance over the menu. He wondered what Grace was doing. He wondered who Grace was doing and if she’d had her gorgeous body tied up while they were doing it.
He didn’t like the jealous feeling in the pit of his stomach. Grace was a sub. He knew it. She was someone’s submissive. He doubted it was Wright. The man wasn’t a Dom. Sean fully intended to find out who owned Grace’s loyalty. It couldn’t possibly be too serious. She didn’t wear a collar, not even a small necklace to signify that she belonged to someone. No Dom worth his whip would let a sweet subbie like Grace walk around completely uncollared.
The door opened and Jake and Adam walked in, their entrance punctuated with a blast of wretchedly hot air. The September night hadn’t cooled off a bit.
But then neither had Sean.
Adam immediately walked to the bar and started to flirt with the woman there. Jacob Dean’s razor-focused stare found Sean. He moved through the crowded bar with the grace of a predator. Those dark eyes scanned the bar for any potential threats before he slid into the booth. Sean was surprised at how nice it was to see his former army buddies. They had been on assignment and out of the office for much of the last year.
“Hey, Sarge. Good to see you again. I sent our report directly to your e-mail, coded, of course, sir.” Despite the fact that they had left the Green Berets years before, Jake had never gotten out of the habit of deferring to him. Sean had been Jake’s warrant officer in their Special Forces team. Jake had been the intelligence and operations officer, while Adam had been the sergeant in charge of communications. “How did the meeting with Wright go?”
Adam Miles had two beers in his hand when he sat down beside Jake. He handed one to his partner and took a long swallow of the other. Adam was a different story. He had never shown much respect in the first place. He certainly didn’t bother to now. “Who gives a fuck about Wright? Tell me how the meeting with our luscious little Grace went.”
The longneck hit the table with more force than Sean meant to use. “Don’t play your games with Grace.” The thought of Grace with Jake and Adam made his hand itch to beat the shit out of his two closest friends. “She better think you’re gay.”
Jake laughed. “Oh, she does. But then they usually do.”
“Right up to the point they find themselves in between us, howling as we show them the pleasures of double penetration.” Adam held up his beer in a mock toast. His lips spread in a decadent grin. “You would be surprised how well the gay thing works, man. Women open up when they think you’re gay. They fall a little in love. Sure enough, the next thing we hear is something about how she wishes we weren’t gay and bam, wish fulfilled.”
“Sometimes we don’t even need to play the gay card. We only do that undercover. Sometimes honesty works. There are women out there who like to be shared. Lots of them. That little lieutenant sure liked it.” There was a warm affection in Jake’s brown eyes as he obviously remembered the good time.
Sean had to roll his eyes. “I can’t believe the two of you joke about that. What am I saying? You joke about everything. Most people wouldn’t joke about the incident that got them dishonorably discharged.”
Adam shrugged. “I thought we were very honorable. She came at least four times before we went off.”
“The general wasn’t happy when he walked in on us. I think he’d been planning to make a move on her himself. Asshole.” Jake sighed. “Anyway, I like this job better. Big Tag doesn’t care what we do in the bedroom, and he’s better armed than the US Army.”
Big Tag didn’t have any right to question other people’s kinks. He had enough of his own. Of course, so did Sean. He was just going to make certain Grace Hawthorne indulged in his kinks, not the ménage boys’. “Have you made contact with Grace?”
Sean didn’t like the grin that crossed Adam’s face. There was far too much intimate knowledge in it. “While you’ve been in the Windy City, we’ve been here. We’ve been her happy hour buddies for the last several weeks. She apparently likes to take new employees under her wing, show them the ropes. She quickly decided that Jake and I were of a homosexual bent and introduced us.”
“I’m playing hard to get.” Jake said, taking a drag off the longneck.
“As if. We flipped a coin, and I have to be the softie this time. I hate that, although it seems to work with Grace. Anyway, she’s very happy with her matchmaking. This last weekend, she invited us out to her place for dinner. She made a heavenly lasagna. It wasn’t as good as yours, of course, but I was more than willing to spend an extra hour or two in the gym to work it off. Of course, I would have preferred a different workout.”
Sean leaned over. He hoped his face was as intimidating as he felt.
Jake put a hand between them. “Stop it, Adam. He’s got it bad, and you know why. She’s a sweetheart.” Sean sat back. “And he hasn’t gotten laid in a long time.”
“Hey.” What was up with everyone commenting on his love life, or lack thereof? It was starting to get annoying. “This is a job, and I think I’ll fare better with Grace than the two of you.”
Adam ran his free hand through his curly brown and gold hair. “What makes you think that? We can be very charming when we want to be. We’ve been pretty good at getting close to her so far. You didn’t receive a dinner invite yet, did you?”
“She’s submissive.” He was absolutely sure of it now. The way she’d clung to him when things got physical and that breathy little “Sir” sealed the deal. She might be intensely competent in her workplace, but she would submit in the bedroom. She would be soft and sweet and utterly obedient. She would need it. Sean took a long drink. The beer sucked, but he needed the cold. Just thinking about being the one Grace submitted to was making him hot as hell. “She’s either been in a D/s relationship before, or she’s thought about it.”
Jake’s brown eyes widened at the thought. “With Wright?”
“Hell, no.” Sean couldn’t stand the thought of that bastard touching her. The man obviously had no control. Sean couldn’t think of a worse trait in a Dom. He didn’t care what Grace said. Her boss was in this mess up to his neck, and the sooner Sean brought him in, the better for Grace. She would be out of a job, but Sean already had plans for that eventuality. He was sure he could find something for her to do at McKay/Taggart. That way, she would be close in case he wanted to continue the relationship. “Maybe it was her husband. She’s very sure of herself. She has a self-possession that only comes from being very well loved. It’s intensely attractive. I suppose she could just be naturally submissive. But there was something about the way she called me ‘Sir’ that makes me think she knows her way around D/s.”