Chapter One

 

8 weeks later…

Jennifer Finn was waiting for trouble. She’d been waiting since Alicia and Raoul left for their weekend in Belize. Since she’d assured them that she didn’t want to meet cousin Ernesto, the plastic surgeon who was overly fond of silk shirts.

The offer was nice, and she knew her roommate meant well, but Alicia didn’t understand. As far as she was concerned, the only action Jen had gotten since she moved in was with her “personal massager collection”.

“No one should go without for that long,” Alicia had stated with conviction. “And no self-induced orgasm can take the place of hot, sweaty, break-the-bed sex.”

Jen couldn’t agree more. Sex. She wanted it. She missed it, and no matter how many times she cried out in climax, Trick still hadn’t given it to her.

Then again, she still hadn’t told anyone about his weekly visits. Or about the plans he kept insisting he had for her and the sexy bisexual professor she’d been lusting after for weeks.

Trick hadn’t exaggerated when he said he knew Declan Kelley. Apparently they’d been knowing each other like rabbits off and on for years. The things he’d whispered in her ear about her teacher while he guided her favorite plug into her ass had been fodder for every personal massager session she’d had since.

Her only cause for concern had been the professor himself. He’d hardly looked at her since that first day. His generous notes of praise on her papers notwithstanding, she was getting more than a sneaking suspicion that he was avoiding her. Was he simply upholding his personal space rule? Or was Trick the reason? He wasn’t allowed in the class anymore, so that was a strong possibility.

The mischievous Trick obviously had a talent for making everyone nuts. Where was he? She’d sent him a text last night and he still hadn’t responded. She checked her phone again and jumped when it rang in her hand. “Hello?”

“Did you see the picture I sent of Daddy this morning?”

Jennifer leaned back on the couch and smiled. “Yes, Mama. He’s doing great with those weights now. What’s the doctor saying?”

“That his blood pressure is normal and I should start a new career as a personal trainer,” Ellen Finn said, laughing. “He feels like that TIA might have been a one-time thing, thank goodness. Are you coming to see us this weekend?”

I was hoping to be doing something else this weekend. “I actually have a lot of studying to do. Isn’t Seamus bringing the kids over?”

“Yes, but you know how your father loves to hear about your classes. We’re so proud of you for picking yourself back up after everything and doing so well.”

After almost marrying a man who tried to blackmail my family? Or after doing community service for punching a woman in the face? “I know you are, Mama.”

Her mother hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want to come over? You live so close to campus and I heard they’re throwing a wild costume party? A rage?”

“A rave.” Jennifer shook her head, trying not to laugh. Her mother wasn’t subtle. “Who told you about that?”

“Nina at the salon has a son who lives in the dorms. She says he can’t stop talking about it.”

“It’s nothing. A few fraternities are having a party and raising money for…something. I might take a study break to have a look, but it’ll just be college kids dancing around in togas. Nothing too bad.”

“If you say so.” Her mother sounded doubtful.

You’d think she didn’t trust me, Jen thought with a dry smile. She decided to change the subject. “Stephen sent me another edited picture of Tasha’s sonogram this morning. Did you get it? This time he added hats to their little heads. I’m betting by the time those kids are three months old they’ll be the most photographed twins in the world.”

They talked for a few more minutes and then said goodbye. Her mother was definitely worried about that party. Why? Did she think Jen was going to forget her degree and get engaged to a twenty-year-old boy wearing a light saber?

Jen sighed. Alicia was worried she wasn’t having sex, her mother was worried she might do something, and her brothers were…well, they probably weren’t giving her too much thought. Stephen had twins on the way, Owen was driving Jeremy crazy with wedding planning and Seamus already had four kids he was raising alone. But when they did think about her? It was probably to worry.

What was it about her that made people want to tell her what to do? Her Orphan Annie coloring? Her inability to toast bread? Or was it her tendency toward extremes? Whatever the reason, if they had their way she’d be insulated with layers of bubble wrap and only brought out for special occasions with proper supervision, no matter how old she was.

She checked her messages again. Still nothing. “Damn.”

Usually he sent some response right away. A smile. A dirty rejoinder. But then, he was also the one to initiate most of their conversations and meetings. Maybe he didn’t like her taking the lead?

Her family would definitely be worried if they knew about Trick and what she was doing with him. What she wanted to do with him and her professor. Her brothers would have simultaneous heart attacks and fall like Irish dominoes. Especially Stephen. Trick was his friend from high school and thirteen years her senior.

Stephen had no one to blame but himself. All she’d done was go to a club that practiced safe, sane and consensual BDSM. The same club his then-future wife had practically lived in and Jen’s brother Owen frequented more than he visited his mother. Stephen hadn’t had them followed. But then, neither of them was the baby sister whose last bad decision had hurt the family and revealed more than one secret relationship.

Still, it was a dick move on his part, and he hadn’t even been the one to admit to it. She’d found out from Trick himself, after she’d been arrested.

That was a fun memory.

He still hadn’t told her why he’d been hanging around after Stephen called him off. She knew it wasn’t just her irresistible charms, though since the semester had started, she’d bet her professor had something to do with it.

Did he sneak into Declan’s bed the way he did hers? The idea didn’t bother her at all. In fact, it was pretty damn hot. So hot, her body started to react the way it always did when she thought of them, so she got up and headed to the bathroom for a cool shower.

If he were here now this wouldn’t be an issue, and his absence was starting to grate. She finally had the apartment to herself and they didn’t have to worry about keeping quiet. If Trick didn’t get his ass over to her apartment, or at the very least text or call her by the time she got out, she’d take care of the problem herself, then settle in with Netflix and chocolate ice cream and forget about him.

She sent him one more text and then set the phone down on her nightstand before heading into the shower to relax. Usually a long soak complete with shaving and self-pampering helped to prepare her mentally for a night with him. However he decided to torment her, it would always end up with her in a boneless sprawl in the middle of the bed, crying tears of release. And he’d still have most of his clothes on and leave before morning.

She supposed Professor Hot Lips would call her behavior a sexual rite. The virgin bride being prepared for her wedding bed. The lamb being soothed and massaged before the slaughter. When he said it, he made it sound sensual instead of sadistic. She was creating an offering Trick wouldn’t be able to resist.

If he answered her messages.

Jen closed her eyes, letting the water soothe her. Thinking about Trick’s visits always made her remember her time at the club. Other than three-minute-missionary Scott, her idiot ex, it was the only thing she had to compare this to.

For several months after her breakup she’d thrown herself into the world of kink with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Every munch and gathering, she was there. Every demo, she was the first volunteer. And in her play, she gravitated to couples—not because she wanted a threesome with them necessarily, but because she wanted more.

Trick knew that. Was that how he knew she’d go along with his plan to seduce the professor? Did he think her experience was the perfect training for a third to have?

She hadn’t done it consciously. Back then she’d just needed the extra attention and reassurance…and a few cathartic whacks here and there. She was angry with herself for being fooled for so long and having potentially damaged Jeremy and Tasha’s relationships. Curious and full of unsatisfied desire, she’d ended up worrying her family and, in all honesty, scaring herself. She’d just been sick of being Little Finn. The only girl child of Clan Testosterone.

Growing up surrounded by three older brothers and six hulking male cousins didn’t make life easy. They were all overprotective, oblivious and hypocritical. But it wasn’t intentional, she knew. Just misguided. And they all showered her with so much love and affection she felt too guilty to seriously complain. She wasn’t above sarcasm, but that only made them laugh and did nothing to change their behavior.

Owen’s high school buddies, Tasha and Jeremy, had made life as Little Finn bearable. They’d been her only confidants for the longest time. That was why she’d gone to them when she found out about Scott. Why her heart had really broken over his actions—because they’d been the targets of his spying. They didn’t blame her, though she knew without a doubt it was her fault. If she’d broken up with him the first time she’d wanted to—in the ninth grade—it never would have happened.

Stephen’s twin, Seamus, said it was a good thing, because it had made people admit how they felt about each other. Now Tasha was married to Stephen and pregnant with twins, and Jeremy was planning his wedding to Owen.

Her confidants had officially joined the enemy camp.

She no longer felt entirely comfortable telling either one them about Trick and how much she’d come to crave his attention. She couldn’t tell anyone, which only served to make his visits more exciting.

What did that say about her?

He knew it. Knew all he had to do was smile in that wicked, knowing way, and no matter where she was or what she was doing, she’d be thinking about his hands slipping inside her panties, caressing her as he made dark promises.

She was ready for him to make good on a few of those promises as soon as possible. Specifically his promise of actual sex. He dangled the potential out in front of her like a tasty treat to keep her in his thrall. The positions he wanted to take her in, what drove Declan wild. He told her how much he wanted her and how hard it was to wait, and then he’d make her come and tell her what he wanted her to do in Declan’s next class.

Jen didn’t think the professor noticed, but she always followed Trick’s instructions just in case. Wearing a shirt with buttons that she’d play with and slowly undo throughout the lecture. Making sure she dropped a pencil or a book every day as she walked up the stairs to her seat. Wearing her hair in a bun and then taking it out and running her hands through her hair.

That move had two future psychiatrists vying for her number at the end of the lecture, but she didn’t even get a twitch from the professor. It was giving her a complex.

She stepped out of the shower and toweled and moisturized her body before slipping on her new boy shorts. The lace was uncomfortable on her already sensitive skin, but she’d bought these after seeing Trick’s reaction to the bra she’d still been wearing when she fell asleep studying—apparently the rough, tough investigator had a thing for ripping lace.

After she pulled a sheer chemise over her breasts, her gaze fell on the textbook that was still on her bed. She opened it to look at Declan’s headshot again. Trick said the seduction was just a game, that Declan wanted her to join them. But Trick wasn’t always entirely forthcoming. Which was the polite way of saying he could be full of shit if it meant getting his way.

Did the professor really want a woman between them? She hoped so, because she couldn’t stop thinking about the two men together, about joining them, and it was playing havoc with her ability to study. They were both just so…edible. Irresistible in two entirely different ways.

Trick had two full sleeves of ink on his forearms, and he dressed like a jobless student despite his being in his late thirties. He seemed easygoing and reckless—but Jen knew that was a smokescreen. There was something dangerous about him that she could sense instinctively. She imagined he was good at his job. You wouldn’t notice him unless he wanted you to, and you wouldn’t want to meet him in an alley. Not if you weren’t his friend.

Professor Declan Kelley was at the opposite end of the spectrum. After that first day, he’d worn nothing but expensive, tasteful sweaters over buttoned up shirts and jeans that looked as if they’d been ironed. He had short, thick brown hair that was never out of place and eyes that were a surprisingly stormy gray behind his black-frame glasses. He was brilliant. Smart and quick with a voice that kept a room full of easily distracted students in his thrall. And those lips… Jen couldn’t look away when he spoke. They were beautiful. Full and tempting.

Had he wrapped them around Trick’s cock and made him lose control the way she dreamed of doing? Did Trick kiss him as if he were starving? Did he bite him the way he liked to bite her?

She imagined them both naked and Trick teasing her professor. Covering his mouth as he slipped his fingers inside Declan’s ass. Tugging his hair. But in her fantasy he didn’t stop and make Declan wait for the main course.

God, she needed to get a handle on this.

She readjusted the shorts and frowned. These really weren’t made for comfort. Especially when she was aroused. The lace scraped on her sensitive skin.

Jen picked up the phone to check her messages and smiled…before she read his reply.

Job taking longer than I thought. Stakeout will probably last for a while. Will you miss me?

“Damn it,” she said, frustrated. She was finally alone in the apartment and he couldn’t come over because he was sitting in his car waiting for someone else to do something dirty?

She turned the phone around in her hand and tilted her head, wondering how best to respond. Without thinking, she took a picture of her underwear. Glancing at it, she smiled in surprise. This was a good camera. She could see every detail behind the clinging lace.

“No.” She shook her head. She couldn’t send this. She shouldn’t. Not after all the trouble Scott had caused with his phone last year. Intimate pictures and Finns never ended well.

It’s just underwear. No one would know it was you. It will drive him crazy.

She knew it would. And maybe it was her sex drive talking instead of her brain, but he needed a taste of his own medicine. Swearing at herself and throwing caution to the wind, Jen typed in a message and added the picture before hitting send.

No. But you’ll miss me.

She ordered pizza and sat down to binge-watch a few hours of Netflix in scratchy lace underwear while she waited for his reply. It felt nice to have the last word and show him she could give just as good as she got. He wasn’t going to turn her into his personal sex slave.

Aren’t you already there? The voice in her head taunted. You’re waiting for his next move, ready to join his fantasy three-way. You give him whatever he wants. You’re the one waiting by the phone for your instructions and wearing holey underwear.

“Fuck that,” she muttered.

There were already too many men in her life who thought they could control her. Who thought she needed their guidance.  She had a working dildo and a box full of toys that she’d thoroughly enjoyed long before Trick snuck in through her window and told her about the professor. She didn’t need either of them.

She took off her underwear and tossed it on the floor, glaring at the pointless panties and reveling in the fact that Belize was too far away for her roommate to get a headache and ask to come home. She lay down on the couch in her chemise and nothing else, and promised herself that tomorrow she would get her act together. No more obsessing about men. Or ménage. Or ménage with those men.

 

 

She woke up slowly, dreaming of Declan Kelley spanking her with a ruler in front of the whole class. Trick had joined him and was using his hands to make her come again and again as the ruler came down on her flesh.

Whack!

She opened her eyes and moaned against the hot, callused palm that covered her mouth. “It’s only me, Jen,” Trick told her, the way he always did when he snuck into her bedroom. “You must have been having one hell of a good dream, baby.”

He was sitting beside her on the couch with his hand between her legs, driving her wild. How had she not woken up as soon as he’d touched her? Her hips lifted off the couch in a plea for more, her body already close to the edge as he slipped two fingers inside her.

He took the hand over her mouth away gently, his touch a caress. “You’re so fucking wet, Jen. Were you dreaming about me?”

“I thought you were working,” she gasped. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Or knock?

“I couldn’t resist your invitation. You knew I wouldn’t be able to.” He cupped her breast through the chemise and pinched her nipple, making her moan. “You shouldn’t have sent that on your phone. I hope you deleted it and ran antivirus software.”

He wanted to have a conversation about phone viruses after waking her up halfway to orgasm?

“Brady’s boyfriend already put something on it,” she said distractedly. “It scans for bugs every hour.”

“That’s not the point. You were being careless just to tempt me. Or punish me.”

She covered the hand between her legs and pressed the heel of his palm against her clit. Yes. “It’s only a punishment if it turned you on. Did it, Trick?”

“I think it’s been too long since you’ve been spanked.”

Jen smiled sleepily, teasing him. “I think you’re right. Should we send the photo to your favorite professor? I was dreaming about him spanking me while you touched me just like this. Is he the kind of man that would spank me the way I deserve to be spanked?”

He muttered a few curses under his breath and her smile widened. She was such a brat. She used his hand to press her clit harder and gasped when the feeling sent a spark up her spine. So close.

Trick went still beside her. “You don’t need to go anywhere else for a spanking, Jen. You deserve one just for taking off those lace panties before I could rip them off with my teeth.”

She groaned when his fingers left her, desperate for her orgasm. “Please.”

Trick stood and pushed back the coffee table, lifting her off the couch to stand beside him. He undid his belt buckle and she licked her lips. “Are you going to spank me with that belt, Trick?”

“You’d probably like that,” he growled. He slid it out of its loops and caressed her hip with the leather, making her tremble. Then he dropped it on the floor in front of her. “But I’m more tactile and not nearly as sadistic as those men you used to play with.”

He unzipped his pants but stopped just shy of pulling out his erection. Evil. He was evil. “Now you’re teasing me,” she moaned. “You know what I want, Trick. Let me touch you.”

He sat down on the couch and dragged her across his lap. “Just this tonight,” he rasped. “I want you to get your spanking.”

The first smack of his hand made her body arch. He did it again. “I wasn’t lying when I said I had to work.”

He knew what he was doing. His hand was landing rhythmically all over her ass, making her squirm. The hot sting turned into need. Each time their flesh connected she wanted more. “I’m not sorry,” she moaned.

“I know you’re not.” Smack. “I was doing my best to focus on my client, and all I could think about were those damn lace panties.” Smack.

“Don’t stop.” She loved what he was doing. “I didn’t know you were so good at this.” She’d have been begging to be punished that first night.

“You have no idea, Jen. Declan’s the one with the real skills. I already know you’ve tempted him, and there will be payback. But you’re going to love it, aren’t you, greedy girl?” He pushed one wet finger into her ass and she rocked between it and his denim-covered erection.

Just like that she was lost in the fantasy again. “Yes. I want it.”

“He’s going to want inside as much as I do, Jen. He’s a big man, but he’s going to want this ass. Will you give it to him?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck, you’re so sexy, Jen. So ready for us. Show me how ready. Come for me.”

Her body responded almost instantly to his command. Damn it, she was his sex slave. “Trick. Oh God.”

Shaking against him with the powerful climax, she gasped, feeling his erection between his open jeans as waves of pleasure rolled over her. She wanted to please him too. “Let me,” she whispered. “Just once.”

He didn’t ask what she was talking about. “Not yet.”

“When?” She wanted him. She wanted every picture he painted of them together to be real. She was so ready she felt like she was going to burst. So frustrated that he wouldn’t give in to her.

Then send him away.

She couldn’t.

“Did you get the costume for the party?” he asked instead. He lifted her off of him and zipped his pants back up with a grimace while she watched.

“Maybe.”

His smile was a hard line. “I’ll be taking you. And Declan will be joining us.”

He had her full attention. “He will? I thought no teachers or faculty were allowed?”

“Costumes are for more than just role playing.”

She studied Trick with narrowed eyes. “Is this true? Are you playing with me again?”

“Doubting woman.”

“Frustrated woman. Tricky man.”

“That’s right, baby. You’ll thank me for it later. Right now you’re going to listen to everything I say and do exactly what I tell you. Tomorrow we start the final phase of Operation Three-way. That is, if you’re ready.”

“That’s a horrible name.” But she couldn’t stop smiling now. “Tell me what I have to do.”

“You wear that costume and be yourself, Jen. You don’t have to do anything else.” He climbed onto her body and kissed her until both of them were panting and clinging to each other, desperate for more. “I have to go.”

“No.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Now.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Kinky control freak,” she muttered against his lips, biting him.

“Trust me.”

She walked him to the door, laughing as he tried to resist walking through it instead of sneaking out as usual, before kissing him goodbye. As she locked up and headed to her bedroom, a part of her thought her mother was right. She should probably stay home and avoid what could possibly be one of the crazier parties she’d ever gone to.

She should, but she wasn’t going to. She’d be damned if she was going to miss that rave now that she knew Trick and the professor would both be there. With her. Who could say? Maybe she’d finally get lucky.

She was a Finn. Her family’s famous luck was bound to come through for her eventually.