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Fortunately, Forest Summers provides an unknowing assist. He bellows, using that impossibly deep voice of his, announcing, to all, his intentions.
The man is monolithic.
With his arctic-blue eyes and white-blond hair, he’s the living embodiment of the Norse god of thunder with a voice like thunder booming in the night sky. Someone once said his voice sounded like boulders gnashing together. It’s pretty accurate.
At just under seven feet, he towers over all the Guardians, looming over us with the advantage of height and musculature. That says a lot when a man like me says something like that. At six-foot-four, I’m typically one of the tallest men in the room.
A normal room.
Around my fellow Guardians, I’m merely average in height, maybe an inch or two taller than most.
I never look up at anyone.
But I do for Forest.
I also look up at Paul.
The men are nearly the same height, but where Forest is towering and broad of muscle, Paul is wiry and whipcord strong. The two of them are polar opposites; Forest with his white-blond hair and ice-blue eyes and Paul with dark, wavy hair and a coal-black gaze.
They’re two parts of the throuple that makes up Forest’s unique family structure. Two men. One woman.
Sara is a beautiful woman, soft spoken, but takes no crap from Forest. Other than Skye, Forest’s unique adoptive sister, Sara is the only woman I know who’s brave enough to dress Forest down. Sara is Forest’s wife, where Paul is Forest’s Dom, which makes little sense until you gaze into the darkness of Paul’s eyes.
That man exudes a dominant aura and he tops Forest. Which is weird, until you understand Forest’s traumatic past.
He and Skye were both orphaned young. About the age when I was pouring over my father’s pornography collection, the two of them were being horrifically abused by their foster father, a monster of a man.
When asked how the throuple works, all three of them, separately, will give the same answer.
Sara and Paul are the two halves that make Forest whole. I can only assume Paul’s dominance feeds the darkness in Forest. Or maybe Paul’s the only thing keeping the darkness from consuming Forest?
Sara is the light that shines with hope. She’s the balance to Paul’s darkness. As far as I know, there’s no sexual relationship between Sara and Paul. Which isn’t what I would expect within a throuple. For them, it works, and that’s all that matters.
For me, Forest’s bellow couldn’t come at a better time.
“We’re heading out.” Forest stomps over to the table and puts down his red solo cup filled with water. “You boys take care of these girls.”
As an ex-addict, Forest is several years clean. I also know where the three of them are headed tonight and why he’s drinking water instead of wine or the beer Zeb brought up.
The Forge is a BDSM club I’ve frequented before. I love to dominate during sex. Give me a willing submissive and sex takes on a whole other layer of sensation. Everything’s heightened about the entire experience. The emotions more intense. The orgasms more powerful. The connections forged nearly unbreakable.
But I don’t like to maintain that ferocity of control all the time. I need to take breaks and I’m not interested in the whole thing outside of sex.
For me, BDSM is like ice cream. I love ice cream. Sometimes, vanilla is all I need. Sometimes, I gotta have that rich, dark chocolate ice cream drowned in chocolate syrup and drizzled in chocolate sprinkles on top. Sometimes, a few chocolate sprinkles over my vanilla ice cream does the job just fine.
Barbi is a chocolate sprinkles kind of woman. Her strength is what will make her a beautiful submissive one day, but there’s no way she’ll ever cede complete control to her Dom.
Not in the way Forest does with Paul.
“Thanks for watching over them.” Rafe swings out his arm, hand extended, and clasps arms with Forest.
That’s another thing. Forest doesn’t shake hands like a normal man. At least, not with his Guardians. He treats us like his own personal Vikings. We clasp hand and arm, and if we carried shields, we’d be banging our axes against them as our fearless leader left us for the night.
Paul and Forest make the rounds, saying their goodbyes, which gets me up and off my feet. It’s the escape that places space between Barbi’s odd reaction and allows me to gracefully make my exit.
Sara hugs each of us in turn. She’s got the warmest, biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.
“Take care of them.” When Sara hugs me, her words include Barbi and Kaye, even though only Carmen and Rosalie need protection from Carmen’s horrific father.