As soon as we could, we headed to the hospital the next morning. Rex and I waited in the long, sterile hallway in plastic chairs as Nate hugged his sister and, much to our relief, his father. “I’m sorry, Dad, I-I didn’t know,” he said with tears floating in his steel-blue eyes. “You’re here son, that means the world to me. She wants to see you.” The three of them walked into the hospital room arm in arm.
I waited with Rex for over an hour. He rejected my offer to go get everyone coffee with a gruff, “You don’t leave my sight. Not even to take a shit, got it?”
“Romantic,” I replied with an eye roll.
“We took a huge risk leaving the compound with you. If anything happened to you…” He took a deep breath and walked to the windows at the end of the hall.
Nate’s mother, Nancy, continued to decline over the course of the week. The family sat by her side night and day, praying, begging, and pleading with God to save her. On Thursday afternoon, she died in her sleep at the young age of fifty-six. Nate was inconsolable as we held him in the chapel of the hospital, four loving arms wrapped around his tall, lean frame as he wept.
We managed to get him to eat only a few crackers that night before we went to sleep. The viewing was scheduled for the next afternoon, and the funeral the day after. I begged to be allowed to go, but both men insisted that I stay behind with Rex—there was too great a chance of pictures of me leaking out, putting all of us in danger. The media was already arriving to the small town and setting up news vans outside the hospital. The return of missing billionaire Nathaniel Slater wasn’t going to go unnoticed.
As was our routine, we went to bed curled up in front of the television, only this time, rather than me in the middle, Rex spooned up behind Nate and we both held him tight as he worked through the grief of losing a parent. While I dozed off to sleep with heavy eyelids, I heard Nate whisper to Rex, “Say it.” Rex moved toward him, but I kept my eyes shut to give them some space. “You know I do,” Rex’s deep voice said. “I need to hear it tonight, please.” Nate sounded broken, pained. “I love you, Nathaniel, you belong to me, forever.”
When I woke the next morning, the hot sun streaming through a crack in the vinyl curtain liner, I looked over to the men I loved. Nate’s head was on Rex’s sleeping chest, the same way I normally slept with Rex, and Rex’s strong, comforting arms were wrapped around Nate’s back, holding him close. I crept to the coffee machine as they slept, flipping through the muted TV channels. A local morning show was running the story of Nate’s return from the Amazon to be by his mother’s side as she bravely fought cervical cancer.
I wasn’t allowed to be seen at the funeral home, but Nate’s father, Al, invited us for dinner at their house after the viewing. I wore the simpler of the two black dresses I’d brought, and as I slipped into the shiny black pumps, I asked Rex, “So when they ask, who am I with?” He was standing at the mirror, carefully tying his black silk tie into a Windsor knot. I was so used to seeing Rex dressed for jungle survival that the sight of him in a suit peaked my libido, but I fought the urge to flirt as I remembered the pain Nate was in.
“Well,” he said, straightening the tie and adjusting his collar, “that’s up to Nate, I think. Al has hinted a few times that we might be together, but he’s never come right out and asked. I’m sure the addition of you really has them scratching their heads.”
“How would you define it?”
“I wouldn’t,” he said flatly.
“Well, I mean, you two don’t have sex—I mean not together, not together alone, anyway. But Nate would if…”
“Can we move on?” He slid his designer jacket on over his broad shoulders and grabbed a black pair of socks from his suitcase. When not in combat boots, Rex rarely wore socks. He often wandered the house shoeless, and I loved his sexy bare feet. He was ink-free from the waist down, and the contrast of his untouched skin below with the elaborate tattooing above was stunning. I hadn’t found any further body jewelry on Rex, and I’d explored every inch of his fine physique, but he did have several piercings that he left open—ears, the other nipple, and a few more man-made holes riddled his gigantic ballsack. In addition to the holes, his body was lined with thin, barely visible scars in straight lines. He also had a puffy, larger scar from what appeared to be a surgery underneath where the word Trust was inked below his ribs. My mind drifted back to what to refer to their sort of bi, sort of not, unique relationship.
“I’d say you are hetero life partners,” I eventually decided as I swiped a line of black eyeliner around my eyes.
Rex dropped his sock, his head whipping around to glare at me. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“I think it’s from SNL…”
He sighed and finished pulling up his socks before sliding his feet into a stiff pair of leather shoes. “I haven’t seen Saturday Night Live in sixteen years, baby girl.”
“You should wear underwear,” I teased as I dabbed lip-gloss around my mouth. Rex was usually commando, but I didn’t want his metal piercings showing through the satiny fabric of the suit at a family dinner. “I’m not a teenager, Penny, I’m wearing underwear, see?” He pulled the waistband of his trousers down to show me the band of his brand-new Calvins.
“Okay, let’s go, I hate to be late. We’re supposed to meet the family back at the house,” he nagged as he looped the battered Omega watch he wore over his wide wrist. With metal and ink covered by the dark suit, he looked more like a successful businessman than the primal Rex I was used to. “I hope all this grief is over with soon, Princess, because I can’t wait to fuck you again. Or watch Nate fuck you…”
“You’re a voyeur,” I teased, slipping gold hoops into my earlobes.
“Oh big time. Watch, be watched—yeah, baby, that’s definitely my kink. But if anyone other than Nate ever touches you,” he made a cutting motion across his throat with his hand.
“What about Nate with someone else?” The thought of it made me cringe with jealousy, but I was curious about the depth of Rex’s kink. “So curious today, baby girl. Before seeing you on the plane that night, I was never interested in watching Nate with anyone else, no.”
“He said he’d been with women in Colombia. Did that make you jealous?”
“Hm,” he mused, his index finger stroking his chin. “I guess I didn’t really think about it at the time. But now, you both belong to me, we belong to each other. We are three, and it’s what’s right for us. I don’t need to have it labeled as anything.”
“You know, Nate’s not here… I could kneel down and…” I dropped to my knees in front of him and licked my lips. He looked down at me, his caramel color hair flopping down over his forehead. “You’re a naughty girl, and trying to make us late. But, it’s been forever, and I’m about to burst looking at your ass wiggling around in that dress.”
“You went two years without sex, right? What’s a few days?” I teased.
“I went two years without sex with others, I jacked off all fucking day.”
“So is that a yes?”
“Open up but be quick, and I’ll try not to ruin those glossy lips.”
“You’re so fucking bossy,” I teased as I unzipped his suit pants and worked his hardening cock out through the fly.
“Watch your fucking language, Princess, or I’ll turn you over my knee again right now.” I wrapped my lips around him, my tongue toying with the titanium barbell along the underside of his growing cock. “Fuck, baby, you’re good at that,” he groaned, his legs bracing as I sucked him slowly into a shuddering orgasm.
The tip of my tongue flicked around the head of his cock, greedily cleaning every last drop from him. “That’s enough, we need to go,” he said, slipping his half-erect cock back into his pants. “What about me?” I wiggled my hips—I was so turned on I’d come from the slightest touch. He reached down and pulled me to my feet. “No time, sweetheart, you’ll have to wait.” With a swat to my ass, he directed me to the door. “No fair,” I pouted. He looped his arm through mine and walked me into the open elevator. “Life is not fair, baby.”
Chapter Twelve
After the funeral, the plane was loaded up with our American supply bounty as we strapped in our seatbelts for the flight back home. Home, it was now home to me. Nate was still dressed in the black suit he’d worn to bury his mother. We’d given him space to just be silent and grieve, so little had been said after we picked him up for the airport.
Within an hour, Rex was asleep in his chair. I looked over to Nate—I had no idea what to say. “Come back and just lie with me?” His steel blue eyes looked so sad as he stood from his chair and reached a hand out toward me. I walked with him to the back—the bedroom where I first woke up after being drugged and taken by him. It seemed like forever ago—then I was terrified, now I realized that these two men risked their lives to save mine.