A young woman orchestrates a threesome for her boyfriend's birthday only to fall in love for a second time.
Jackie and Marten have been together for six years and things are getting a little stale, but Marten's birthday should give Jackie the perfect opportunity to jazz things up a little in the bedroom.
Adult film star Tony Marling's role is simple enough: show up, be willing to please and readily satisfy Marten's bisexual fantasies for the one-night adventure of a lifetime. Jackie couldn't be more taken with their choice of partner. Tony is a passionate lover and the sexual chemistry he has with the pair is undeniable, but he is not as simple and straightforward as Jackie first thought.
When a past affair resurfaces, will Tony's secrets unravel the burgeoning romance or will Jackie and Marten confess their feelings in time to convince Tony that he has a place beside them?
Reader Advisory: This story contains elements of kink and male submission.
General Release Date: 30th August 2013
Jackie drummed her fingertips against the chipped Formica table. She was determined not to check her watch again—the hands only seemed to move slower if she did and, really, she had no business being impatient. She’d known she would be a little early the moment she’d left work. Poor impulse control was to blame—that and a tendency to second-guess her every move for fear of the consequences. Nerves had plagued her all day. It was why she had made her excuses an hour before the end of schedule and pleaded a migraine to get out of carpooling with Clara, the PA down the hall who dropped her off now and again. It wouldn’t be the case tonight.
A cab had ferried her over to the coffee shop in all anonymity about a good half-hour before Jackie was scheduled to meet anyone. At first it had seemed like a good idea. The place was mostly empty, with students still in class and worker bees like herself still stuck inside their offices. She’d figured that would make it easier to pick Tony out of the masses when he finally made it there. Then patrons began filing in, chased off the streets by the smattering of bitterly cold rain dripping down in a thin sheet over Rotterdam.
Twenty minutes later, the café was packed, countless umbrellas crowding the far corner of the shop and orders being called out every thirty seconds or so by harried baristas. Jackie leaned her head against the glass. It did nothing to cool her nerves.
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?" The voice was definitely male and definitely urbane. It also spoke Dutch with a strong accent—not unusual considering that this was a pretty touristy area. Jackie herself had no room to criticise. As an expat, she was here at the mercy of the locals who often caught onto her American brogue and switched to speaking her own language out of kindness.
She glanced up. "Yes. I mean, not yet. But it will be," Jackie said, grimacing. "I’m waiting for someone."
"Let me guess," the man said, in English. He bent a little at the waist as he added in a stage whisper, "Your man is a porn star."
Jackie’s jaw didn’t drop, but it was a close call. "You’re Tony Marling? Oh, thank God."
"I know, I know… I look different with my clothes on!" The man laughed gaily, though he sounded a little strained. "Hang on, I’m going to grab something to drink and I’ll be right with you."
He did look different in person, but Jackie would have blamed the discrepancy on the fact that he’d grown a beard since the last recording on his website rather than the crisp polo shirt and aviator jacket. She flushed a little as he returned, armed with a steaming cup of boiled water and a teabag propped tellingly against the side.
"You’ll forgive me for being disgustingly British, won’t you?" Tony asked. "I converted to Rooibos, but I still can’t stomach coffee." He was a good-looking man, there was no doubt about that. His blue eyes crinkled when he smiled and his lashes fanned long over his cheeks as he perched at the table. But Jackie had contacted him expecting some kind of stylised sex god. This version of Tony Marling was almost, well, human.
"I’m a caffeine addict," she heard herself mumble. "It’s genetic. Turns out that if your ancestors go and drown all the British tea in a harbour about a hundred years ago, you get to wake up at three in the morning craving a latte…"
Tony chuckled as he dunked his teabag into the cup. His gestures were very fluid, almost absentminded. There was none of that tense, tight-laced struggle of some of the videos Jackie had seen of him on the Internet.
"So, uh… How did you recognise me?"
"I’m sorry?" Tony glanced up from the precious alchemy of preparing his tea. "Oh, I looked for the girl wishing she hadn’t been able to make our rendezvous." His broad grin gave him away. So did his laugh. "You’re hogging a table and you’re the only one here alone and dry," he explained. "It was a gamble."
"Pretty big risk, opening with ‘I’m a porn star’," Jackie quipped, sure that her cheeks were aflame by now. "A girl might call that harassment…"
"A girl might," Tony agreed, "but I was only inferring that about her date. Plus, there’s nothing wrong with being a porn star. I’m living proof."
The easy way he said it had Jackie feeling like a complete and total prude. She liked to think she was adventurous in her sex life and non-judgemental when it came to other people’s bedrooms. Still, making an appointment with a guy who recorded himself having hard-core kinky sex was a far cry from paying lip service to the all-inclusive mantra she’d been spewing since college—particularly since she wasn’t meeting with Tony for the hell of it. She had ulterior motives.
"I figured," Tony said when she had told him as much. The corner of his lips twitched up. "Thank you for choosing a public place, by the way. I probably wouldn’t have agreed to meet you on a deserted underpass, even if it meant more privacy." He hitched up one shoulder. "No offence."
None was taken. Jackie was actually a little relieved to hear his rationale. She wasn’t the only one out of her depth here. Good to know. "I don’t really know how to start," she confessed. "It’s my boyfriend—"
"You want him killed?" Tony interjected, completely deadpan.
Jackie’s eyes widened. "What?" A couple of heads turned at the outburst, but there was just enough noise in the café that no one paid them much attention. "No! God, no, that’s not—"
Tony reached across the table to pat her hand, a friendly, harmless gesture. "Relax, I’m kidding. You’re really tense, you know that? I’m regretting not getting us a shot of something stronger than coffee. Besides," he added, winking, "I’m only a contract killer on Tuesdays."
It was only going to be harder to spit out her point if he kept making jokes, so Jackie gathered her courage with both hands and blurted out, "My boyfriend’s birthday’s coming up and I want to surprise him with a threesome."
Helena Maeve has always been a globe trotter with a fondness for adventure, but only recently has she started putting to paper the many stories she's collected in her excursions. When she isn't writing erotic romance novels, she can usually be found in an airport or on a plane, furiously penning in her trusty little notebook.