But four months in, when Maddox had asked him to think about moving in, Diesel’s expression was shocked. Like that hadn’t occurred to him. Like he didn’t understand what it meant that from their second date, which was their first fuck, they’d spent every night together, woke up together in one or the other’s beds, played together when they rocked a sub or took on a Mistress and spent every minute they weren’t working . . . together.
They hadn’t ever had the conversation about being exclusive.
They just were. From the second date. Both knowing instinctively that going for another cock was the height of betrayal.
But the man looked for all the fucking world like it never occurred to him he could share a home, and a life, with his man.
Maddox should have known then.
He should have clocked that and put the work in back then.
He didn’t because Diesel had answered his suggestion of thinking about moving in with the words, “What are you doing this weekend, bro?”
And that had been it.
D had moved in that weekend.
And that had been when it changed.
Almost the night he’d moved in, the door closed on certain things they’d had in the beginning and didn’t reopen until Maddox saw Diesel giving it to Molly two years later.
He’d missed it. He’d tried to push it, and been thrown back. He’d gotten pissed about it and tried to passive-aggressive the motherfucker which had not been a sterling idea (this being suggesting he take up the proposal of a Dom who’d made an approach, offering Molly and D the opportunity to watch, something Diesel was violently opposed to and didn’t mind shouting that really fucking loudly, so in the end it was a play that meant Maddox and Molly nearly lost him).
That had told Maddox what he needed to know.
He was D’s, D was his.
Molly might allow a new pussy in the form of a one-time-only Mistress working over one, the other or both her boys (never a sub) because she seriously got off on watching that kind of thing, and that was solely her prerogative.
Even though, that line being drawn, no cock could be added to the equation, whatever door Diesel closed because that motherfucking family of his fucked with his head all his life, was just that.
Closed.
Diesel needed it. He needed to think it was two sexed-up guys who got off on a lot of shit, including fucking each other, but they were hetero and the emotional stuff, the soft stuff, that was saved solely for pussy.
And Maddox took that because that was how Diesel came.
Until that scene at the Bolt with Mistress Sixx.
The kiss they’d shared.
Getting Diesel in the zone he let Maddox make love to him . . . for a while.
Diesel could get into that zone with Maddox, not even realizing what he was doing, giving it to him like that, without mouth to mouth, of course.
But Maddox had to work it and good to take Diesel there, and even when he got a little, some switch in D eventually would flip, he’d close down and in the end it was rough and often brutal.
Which was what had happened at the Bolt.
But with Sixx’s response to watching it—Mistress Sixx, fucking revered in the scene, the soft look on her pretty face, the sorrow in her eyes when she’d looked into his after the scene was over, knowing she got it, knowing she knew what Maddox needed, wasn’t getting and how vital it was—something triggered in Mad.
And now he was finding it harder and harder to let it lie. To sacrifice what was his due. To allow D to stay in that place in his head. Not to wake his shit up, show him what he was missing, what he was withholding from Maddox, and get it through his thick skull his family in Indiana was a pack of vicious bigots who had no place in anyone’s life, but most especially not Diesel’s.
And if none of that happened?
He looked to his coffee.
Back to the pot.
And then to the yard.
All around him was them—them—the three of them. Even his pajama bottoms couldn’t be thrown out because of the memories they held. Molly couldn’t leave for two days without stocking the fridge and setting up the coffeepot for her boys. And you couldn’t step a foot anywhere in that house without a reminder of what Diesel and Maddox had worked side by side to give to their woman.
If one part of the three that made them drifted away, Maddox wanted to think he could keep Molly and continue to make her happy. But he knew there was no hope of that.
She’d never forgive him for letting D go. And she’d never forgive D for going. Or she’d never forgive either of them if Maddox couldn’t take it anymore and he took off.
They’d disintegrate.
It had to be their three.
But Maddox didn’t know how much longer he could take it.
He also didn’t know how to confront D with it. He’d allowed it to go on so long, he couldn’t even begin to get a lock on how to try to get into his head and sort it out.
Mostly, he couldn’t stand the fear that gripped him at the possibility that, if he tried, Diesel would entirely shut down, completely lose his shit, flatly refuse to take them there, stubbornly become enraged Maddox was trying and then he’d cut ties in a way they couldn’t be mended and he’d go.
Maddox knew Molly felt it. She knew what was not happening, what Mad was not getting, how deep the need to have it ran, and it destroyed their Molly, but she was not that person who could wade in.
She was a sexual submissive, their sub, but she wasn’t a doormat, in sex or in life. She didn’t let them walk all over her, or anyone do that.
But she was a submissive in play and the truth was, she had hints of that in regular life. There were women like Sixx who were strong and rocked that shit, it was beautiful, awesome. And there were women like Mol, the kind of women who attracted men like Maddox and D, who were strong in quieter ways, took care of her men in her ways, but who needed her men to look after her in all other ways.
She needed Maddox to sort shit out.
Diesel needed Maddox to sort shit out.
And last night, waiting for his boy to come home from having beers with those dickheads he called friends but were all homophobic assholes, maybe not as bad as Diesel’s parents and his waste-of-space older brother, but if you could say it, even just razzing the other guys or trying to make them think you had a big dick, you had the bigot in you, Maddox had gone off the rails.
The shit they did early was fucking great.
But in the midst of it, when Diesel had gone rigid like he was preparing to bolt when he thought Maddox was going to kiss him, then later, settled in with a beer and all the bro after they’d both been inside each other, Maddox had let it get under his skin and he’d fucked up.
Woken his man and angry fucked him and D, taking that jacked-up fucking, obviously didn’t miss it.
And being Diesel, he called him on it.
Not knowing how to talk it out, never his strong suit in the first place, Maddox had instead gotten pissed and denied he had a problem.
Which was a lame-ass move.
That was not the way to connect. That was not the way to get in his head.
But Christ, he didn’t know the way.
He sucked back some coffee, studied the yard and heard him coming before he saw him stagger into the kitchen.
Even with his weighty thoughts, Maddox couldn’t bite back the smile.
Diesel’s light-brown hair was totally messed up. His blue eyes were glazed. His huge, built body was uncoordinated, like he was drunk.
He had on a pair of gray sweats cut off just above the bulge of his lower quad and nothing else.