Page 120 of Double Daddies (Dirty Daddies Anthologies #8)

“It’s my life, Tris. I’m not stuck in an office or the labs for twenty hours a day and spending the other four worrying about what consequences my team’s inventions will have on the world.

I’m not stressing over corporate espionage, hostile takeovers, and all the other bullshit that comes along with running a business of that size and nature.

” Mack sighed and lifted his face to the sky.

“I get into bed at night and I’m surrounded by the two people I love.

I’ve got laughter and love, the support of two amazing people, and that…

it’s more fulfilling than all the money I made. ”

Personally, Tristan couldn’t imagine choosing heart over money.

The heart was a fragile thing, too easy to snare and far, far too simple to break.

It wanted to love and receive love in return—a fair exchange, all in all.

But it didn’t matter who it attached itself to—a spouse, a lover, a friend, even family—it would shatter eventually through words or actions.

Money… well, he could drop a quarter million dollars in a night at the casino and the interest on his trust fund would cover that by the next day. It was a tool, an aid, a means to an extravagant end. It couldn’t break a man’s heart unless he was stupid, and Tristan Holdsworth was not a stupid man.

They walked up the steps to the front door and Tristan stepped forward to open it. “I never envisioned this life for you, Mack. You were always Maverick Morehead . Esteemed scientist, developer of untold technological advances.”

Shaking his head, Mack gave him a rueful grin.

“I was never the scientist, Tris. That’s why I had the best team available to me.

All I did was come up with ideas, viable or not, and they were the magicians.

The company was just… a shell that contained all that genius and flaunted it.

Turns out, I have a greater purpose here. ”

“Must be nice to have a greater purpose.” There was humor in his tone, but Tristan felt his own words bite. After all, there wasn’t one on his horizon. He’d made his bed as a manwhore for years and now… he wasn’t sure fucking half the world’s female population qualified as great or purposeful.

“I’m where I belong, Tristan. How about you?”

As they pushed into the bar, Tristan shot him a side glance. “Am I where I belong?”

“Nice try, smartass. I meant, what have you been doing?”

“Oh, this and that. Jet-setting here, sunbathing naked over there… you know, living the extreme high life where I don’t lift a finger and just exist.” Christ, he was becoming an expert at taking shots at himself today. “Same old, same old. You know how it is.”

“We need to find you a hobby.” Mack lifted his hand to the buff, bearded blond behind the bar who’d served Tristan earlier.

“Sex is my hobby.”

“Sex is the elixir of life, sex is my hobby,” he mocked, rolling his eyes. “Sex can’t be the sole reason for your existence, Tris. Doesn’t it get boring?”

“Doesn’t your dick get bored only fucking your husband and wife?

I mean, it makes a change, seeing as you were pretty much a nun before you came here, but the same pieces of ass again and again…

yeah, it doesn’t appeal.” At least, it never had.

Somehow, the game of hunt and capture was losing its luster and he…

something inside him wanted stability, comfort, continuity.

“Liam and I don’t fuck each other. I love Sierra, he loves Sierra, and she loves both of us. Not that I don’t love him—I married them both, after all—but it’s not a sexual kind of love.”

“No crossed swords?”

“No. Maybe if Sierra asked for it, we’d consider it.”

“Mack.” The blond winked at him, then turned gray eyes on Tristan. His eyebrow flicked up. “Back again so soon?”

“I’m a sucker for punishment,” Tristan said dryly, earning a concerned look from Liam and an elbow in the ribs from Mack.

“Ignore him, Liam. He makes it his mission to be an entitled asshole whenever possible. This is Tristan,” Mack introduced, ramming him again with his elbow. “Tris, this is Liam, my husband.”

“Tristan… the Tristan?” Liam’s expression altered completely as realization dawned. He leaned over the bar, hand outstretched for a shake. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything earlier? Any friend of Mack’s is welcome here.”

The handshake was brief but warm. The bartender’s grip was formidable; strong, firm, nothing like the weak, lackluster shakes Tristan usually encountered on his travels.

“I was trying to be incognito for a few days, but that didn’t work out.”

“Is Sierra still at the store?” Mack asked, scouring the room.

“No, she closed up twenty minutes ago. She’s tucked away in the back room, doing something delicate and finicky. It’s a DND situation—Do Not Disturb,” Liam explained when Tristan’s brow furrowed. “Our wife often has sharp implements in her hands, so when she calls a DND, we give her space.”

“Sounds… volatile.”

“You’ll love her. Liam, can you take a break while we wait for her?”

“Sure. So, Tristan, met any subs—or Dommes—while you’ve been here?”

“How long have you been here?” Mack demanded.

Ah, and so the inquisition began. Raising his hands in surrender, he watched Liam duck behind the bar and come back up with three dark blue glass bottles.

Not a brand of beer he recognized, he thought, but he was willing to try something new.

“I’ve only been here a few hours. Decided I’d come for a visit seeing as my invitation to your wedding got lost in the mail. ”

Mack snorted. “Dude, I sent the invite to your PA and emailed a copy directly to you.”

Well, that answered several questions. “Yvette or Yasmin?”

“Brigitte.”

Tristan winced. The one time he’d fucked his PA had come back to bite him on the ass, apparently. “Yeah, Brigitte didn’t really have her head in the personal assistant game.” But it had been in his lap, several times. “We didn’t part on amicable terms.”

“You missed our wedding because you banged your PA,” Mack translated accurately. “When are you going to learn that keeping your dick in your pants at key moments will save you an inordinate amount of trouble down the line?”

“My dick objects to extended periods of captivity.”

Beers expertly hooked in one hand, Liam walked to the end of the bar and came through the hatch. “Mack missed you. We were looking forward to meeting you after hearing so much about you and your antics.”

Antics? For god’s sake, what had his best friend been saying about him? “Nothing good, I hope. All the good bits are boring.”

“Apparently if being a player was a sport, you’d be the GOAT.”

Strange how he could feel pride at his personal accomplishments in the field of fucking around at a professional level, yet be wounded by his friend’s summation.

The truth hurt, he supposed, particularly when his career as a manwhore wasn’t satisfying him anymore, on several levels. “I’ll add it to my resume.”

They took a table in the middle of the room, presumably so Liam could keep an eye on the bar and their wife would be able to see them if she emerged from the back room. As they sat, Mack studied him suspiciously. “Something’s different about you, Tris. It feels like something’s shifted.”

Testing the waters, Tristan shrugged. “I met a woman.”

“You meet a lot of women, it’s nothing new.”

“She’s different.”

“Different enough you know her name?” Mack joked, then his humorous expression faded when he read Tristan’s face. Leaning forward, he touched the back of his hand to Tristan’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. Are you feeling okay?”

Liam narrowed his eyes. “Have you got a thing for Avery?”

“Avery? Our Avery?” Mack gave Tristan a smack on the forehead with his palm before settling back in his chair. “No, Tris. Absolutely not.” He turned his dark eyes on his husband. “Wait, how do you know he’s interested in her?”

The intuitive blond simply watched Tristan like a bug.

“I saw your face when she came in earlier to deliver the cookies. You weren’t looking at her like she was a potential quick fuck.

In your eyes, she was the holy grail.” He laughed, shaking his head before popping the top off a beer and handing it over.

“Here, drink this. Must be a scary experience for a player to stumble across a woman who has the power to bring an end to it all.”

Tristan accepted the beer, a derisive snort in his throat.

He was tempted to deny it, to blow off Liam’s observations, but there was a pair of dark, secretive eyes trapped in his mind’s eye daring him to ruin things before he got a chance to start them.

“Doesn’t matter anyway. She was cuddled up on some guy’s hip last time I saw her, being carted off upstairs. ”

“Some guy?”

“Six-two, dark hair, blue eyes. I figured he was her Dom; she’d been crying, and he was incredibly focused on her.”

Mack and Liam exchanged glances.

“Avery doesn’t have a Dom, Tris. She’s only been here a couple weeks and she mainly keeps to herself in the kitchen.”

“Clay’s had his eye on her from the day she came to interview,” Liam pointed out. “Even Evander noticed his interest. He matches that description—did he look like he wouldn’t seem out of place with a cowboy hat and horse?”

Well, shit. That summed him up down to a tee. “Yeah.”

“Huh. Our little baker has two suitors, Mack.”

“Clay will eat Tristan alive,” Mack predicted somberly.

“Sorry, Tris, but it’s true. If it comes down to a fight, your biggest weapons are a manicure and six hours a week at the gym.

Clay’s all fucking muscle and he’s not a gym bunny.

He spent years as a cowboy, doing ranch shit, until he got totaled by a cow.

If you want a shot at Avery—and I’m not saying you should take one unless you’re damn sure she’s not just a fleeting obsession—you have two options. ”

Fleeting obsession? The truth kept coming, didn’t it? Mack was his best friend for a reason—he knew how Tristan’s brain worked, his likes and dislikes, what collared his interest in a woman. “Might as well give it to me straight, Mack. You’re not pulling punches today.”

“Avery’s becoming a firm favorite among the Masters, not just because she’s an exemplary baker. She’s kind, sweet, shy. The kind of sub we protect at all costs. I love you like a brother, but if you fuck around and break her heart…”

“It’ll cost you,” Liam told him gravely.

“Just give me the options.”

“All right, you’ve been warned.” Mack took the beer Liam held out and took a hefty swallow. “Option one, you go head to head with Clay for her attention. Might not go so well if he’s already charmed her?—”

“He does have a considerable amount of charm,” Liam noted.

“—but it is an option. Or you can talk to them both, find out if they’re in a dynamic, and see if they would be open to exploring a double Dom relationship. Clay strikes me as the possessive type, but people are sometimes willing to venture in a new direction.”

“The other thing to think about is the Little aspect.” Liam swigged his own beer, glancing toward the doors when voices came from the hallway. “Didn’t Violet mention the possibility Avery might have Little tendencies?”

“Good point,” Mack said, nodding as though his husband hit the jackpot.

What the hell was a Little?

“Could you be a Daddy?” Liam asked Tristan.

“I—she’s a child?” Utterly confused, he shook his head.

“In some respects. Some submissives revert back to childlike behavior and mannerisms. They can be sweet and adorable, feisty and complete brats, or somewhere in the middle like our Sierra. Most require a firm hand, guidelines, rules like any child.”

“Some Littles live the lifestyle full time, others when they have the time and freedom. Sierra and Callie—Evander and Elias’s wife—switch between the two, and they both benefit from having two Daddy Dom husbands.”

Brain spinning with information, Tristan sat mutely, trying to process it all.

Littles and Daddy Doms… and here he’d thought stepping into the hardcore BDSM arena would test him.

The Dominant urges he mostly repressed, aside from occasionally tying up a lover, were hidden because the women in his circles preferred romping with a playboy, not kowtowing to a Dom.

Being a Dom held a great deal of responsibility, and for a long time, he’d avoided anything responsible or accountable. If it wasn’t fun, it was too much hassle.

Was he ready to let go of that ideal and actually become something worthwhile?

All for the sake of a woman who may or may not appreciate the effort?

Mack grunted and drank again, shaking his head as though it was unable to hold itself up under the weight of disappointment.

“Forget it. You don’t understand the meaning of commitment, Tristan, and it’s no fault of yours.

Your father hardly set an example, and your mother… hell, she puts an alley cat to shame.”

“Jesus, Mack,” Liam groaned.

Tristan just shrugged. Why deny what was public knowledge?

Reginald Holdsworth IV couldn’t keep his cock behind a zipper; the lesser-known family secret was that he didn’t always take it out for willing women.

More money had been spent paying off the unfortunate ladies than Tristan spent on fueling the private jet over the course of two years.

Marjory, unpitiable wife and utterly useless excuse for a mother, wasn’t much higher in standing when it came to ranking the family whores. Her stable of stallions included a rolodex of suitable names she called upon whenever she got the urge, plus whatever random dick she could pick up.

Oh, he’d followed their leads well, hadn’t he?

Tristan thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

Blindly, even. Somewhere along the rocky path of his childhood, he’d adopted their promiscuity, their lack of morals.

Sex was nothing but a game to them and, in turn, he’d changed the rules to suit himself and come out as the winner every time.

But in reality, how many times had he lost?

How many women might he have created something good with?

What was to say he hadn’t missed his opportunity at what Mack and Liam had?

Straightening his shoulders, he lifted the bottle in his hand and downed the contents. Cold, mellow beer ran down his throat before he slammed the bottle on the table and stared at his best friend. “Tell me what I need to know to be a Daddy Dom.”