Rambo and Ripley loved the dog park at the Discovery Green. Despite the cool breeze of approaching winter, the sun shone bright above us. Isisa jogged to my right with Simba on a close leash, her dog a white-gold cotton ball of fluff no bigger than my two pits.

It had been love at first sight though. The dogs had been all over Simba when we met on the sidewalk in front of Hibiscus Gardens an hour prior. We jogged for half an hour then let the dogs loose in the park to play. The plan was to let them tire themselves out and let my rambunctious pair get some socialization.

Wins on both accounts.

Simba went straight to his kennel once we stepped inside. He sprawled across his padded bed and groaned. Rambo and Ripley sniffed around first then plopped down on the rug nearby.

I snickered. “I think we wore your little guy out.”

“All three of them.” She laughed and grabbed some water from the fridge. “We’ll have to get your guys some beds of their own if they’re going to visit.”

Smiling at the two dogs, I leaned close enough to scratch behind Rambo’s ears. “They’re not going to be with me too much longer. They’ll probably have homes in the next month or two.”

Her brows rose. “You didn’t plan to keep them?”

“Nah. I never keep the dogs I foster. If I kept every pup that came into my house, I probably wouldn’t be able to feed myself anymore.” Rambo lurched to his feet, stretched, then came over to nudge his nose beneath my hand. I petted the top of his blocky, oversized head and grinned. “You’ll have a real home soon, pal. Soon as we find someone who won’t separate you two.”

“Mm-hmm.”

When I glanced up, Isisa had one of those big, secret smiles on her faces, like she knew something and wasn’t letting me in on it. “What?”

“Anyway, I’m going to catch a shower because I’m a disgusting mess.”

I fanned my shirt, trying to coax more air-conditioned current beneath it. “I’ll do the same.”

Isisa paused at the bottom of the steps and looked at me over her shoulder. “You could share mine.”

“I wouldn’t wanna impose.”

“It isn’t imposing if I invite you.”

An invitation to join her in the shower didn’t mean an invitation to sex, I just didn’t think I had the kind of self-restraint and control required not to ogle every inch of her the moment she stripped. The way those leggings hugged her ass was almost obscene. And she’d worn only a peach sports bra beneath a bubblegum pink racerback tank. Isisa and Nandi loved the color pink.

“Don’t have to ask me twice.” I started after her then paused to look at the dogs. “Be good.”

“They’ll be fine.”

As we headed upstairs, I tried to focus on anything besides her Lycra-clad bottom. Pictures hung on the wall, old snapshots of Sasha and Isisa as teens next to Nandi’s graduation photos. Isisa in her cap and gown graduating law school was beside Sasha’s Navy portrait and other photographs of the three of them together. No matter how many times I passed by, I never tired of looking, feeling like I caught some new detail with each observation. The distraction helped.

“Sasha said you were worried about me.” She closed the bedroom door behind us.

I hesitated for a beat. “A little.”

“I do like you. I like you a lot.” While I was accustomed to Sasha’s blushes against her fair skin, I had learned to study Isisa and Nandi for other signs. Nandi wrung her hands and toyed with her clothes. Isisa dropped her gaze to the floor and avoided eye contact.

I stepped close and took her face between both of my hands. “You don’t need to explain it. I can wait.”

“No, I do. I don’t want you to feel like because I’m not jumping your dick every other night like Sasha that I don’t care. Or that I’m disinterested in you because I don’t want to sit in your lap all day like Nandi.”

“Talking with Sasha helped me to understand why you haven’t been physically affectionate all the time. It’s fine. I’m not in this to pressure you into moving forward.”

Her teeth skated over her bottom lip, full and plump. I’d only tasted her a couple times, kissing her always the gentlest. She was the most controlled compared to the two insatiable wildcats beside her.

“I guess… I was worried you were too good to be true. I know Sasha and Nandi claimed and marked you,” she said, stroking the imprint left by Sasha’s teeth, “but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For something to happen that proves you aren’t perfect for us after all. Once I bond with you, it’s sealed. It’s forever. Permanent. I won’t want to be without you, and it would take all of my willpower to separate if the need arose.”

I nodded and stepped forward into her touch. “It is. And I’m willing to accept that risk if you’re willing to have me.”

She closed both hands around a handful of my damp T-shirt. “I know. Talking with her about your concerns made me realize we wouldn’t find a better male.”

“I want to be there for all of you, however you need me. That extends beyond sex, baby.” I pulled her in closer by the hips. When I slipped my thumbs into the band of her leggings, she didn’t draw away.

“What if I want it to be sex this time?”

“Then…” The mere thought and promise of sex sent a hot pulse of arousal straight to my dick. It tensed beneath my gym shorts, and a forward nudge pressed against her. She shimmied back in return, her lips eagerly seeking mine. The sweet taste of her invited me to sweep my tongue into her mouth. Her fingers danced over me, tracing the hard outline of my dick at first, and then delving inside to take it in her hand. Those slim and articulate fingers stroked up and down, exposing me to the cool air of her bedroom.

I nudged down her leggings and slid my fingers down the front of them, breaching the elastic band of pink panties. The soft warmth of her greeted my questing fingers, and she sighed my name.

“Tell me what’s different about you from the other two.” I’d already learned a few of Sasha’s quirks. My lovely blonde and Nandi both loved snuggling after sex, but orgasms wired Nandi harder than a hit of coke. She’d remain awake chatting about anything that interested her afterward, or slip out of bed to write.

“I, uh… I like toys.”

“I take it you don’t mean the cutesy kind.”

“Not unless you count fuzzy handcuffs.”

The mental image conjured by her words made my breath catch in my chest.

“Do you want to see?”

“I’d be an idiot not to.”

Isisa wiggled away from me and crossed the room to her bed. She bent at the foot of it, providing a delicious view of her exposed ass cheeks.

God bless the creator of the thong.

She pulled a trunk from beneath the bed and flipped open the lid, revealing an impressive collection of sex toys, jars of oil, and other novelty items I’d only ever seen in dirty magazines.

After rising to kiss me, she slid a small, bullet-sized vibrator into my hand. “It takes me a while to get… ready.”

“I got all day.”

Isisa led me into an enormous shower with an umbrella fixture angled toward us. We ended up beneath a gentle mist, soaping and washing each other between rounds of hungry kisses, her body pinned against the tile while hot water streamed over my shoulders. No matter how I teased, no matter the angle, she writhed in frustration and grasped, on the brink of orgasm but never there.

I took it as a personal challenge. After drying Isisa first, we moved to her bed. I lifted her with ease from the floor and set her on the edge of the tall sleigh-style bed with her long legs dangling over the edge. My cock throbbed between her soft folds.

Inch by inch, I slid forward.

She tensed, froze up beneath me with large eyes. She as so unbelievably tight the breath left me in ragged gasps, and when I started to withdraw, she curved a leg around me, drawing me back.

“Don’t stop.”

My head fell forward, and I groaned out a curse. Nothing had prepared me for the way she fit, making every second of preparing her worth the wait. Her body squeezed down around my cock and her back arched from the bed. The blankets bunched up in her fisted grip.

“Esteban?” My name became a soft whisper, a breathy moan.

“Hm?”

“I like the way you feel.”

I turned my head and kissed the ankle balanced on my right shoulder. A tug on her hips brought her closer to the edge of the bed to meet my next slow thrust.

“Harder,” she said. “I don’t want gentle, baby.”

“You sure?”

In answer, she thumbed on the bullet and lowered it between her legs, angling it against her clit and my taut flesh. The vibrations sent tingles racing up my spine. When I dragged out and thrust in anew, we made a slick, lewd noise together.

Isisa lifted her other leg and balanced it over my free shoulder. Hands on her hips, I gave her everything she asked for and more. Our position allowed for deep penetration and gave me the perfect view of her quaking breasts and mile-long legs. Each thrust pushed her across the sheets with only my grip dragging her back to meet the next stroke.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes!

I didn’t stop until she screamed. Her ecstatic cries bounced against the walls, and her legs dropped from my shoulders to circle around my waist instead. With another stroke, her body tightened around me. She drew me down by a hand to my nape and bit down on my shoulder.

Pleasure and pain combined into an explosive jolt that seared through every nerve and left me feeling like my blood was aflame. My eyes rolled back in my head, and I slumped down over her, struggling to maintain consciousness while her powerful claim rocked through me.

“Damn, girl.”

“Now you’re mine, too.” A beautiful smile lit her face.

Once our bodies stilled and our breathing slowed, we crawled up over the blankets and stretched out. I gave Isisa her space, content to lie beside her and do nothing else.

“So, I’m just curious, what were you going to do if I had turned out to be some asshole since Sasha bonded with me weeks ago? What was the plan then, since I couldn’t just walk away?”

“You would have disappeared, and I would have consoled them both as they mourned.”

I studied her face, waiting for her to break out into a wide grin, waiting for the humor. It didn’t come, and those solemn brown eyes told me she’d been prepared to leave my remains buried somewhere in the Texas wilderness, never to be seen again.

“Well,” I said, running my fingers through my hair. The chill lingered a few seconds, warmed only by the weight of her breasts against my chest. She wiggled onto me, resting on her forearms. “If I ever have problems I can’t solve through peaceful means, I know who to call.”

Isisa leaned down and nuzzled my throat. A few of her loose braids tickled over my shoulders. “Being a lawyer gives me adequate insight into how to get away with murder.”

“That is somehow both terrifying and sexy.”

We both dozed until Nandi arrived sometime after sunset with dinner. We ate tender roast beef with her and celebrated the milestone in our relationship with one of Isisa’s choice reds, putting her back to sleep again.

Nandi crawled into bed with us and snuggled against my opposite side, sandwiching me between her and Isisa. It was like dying and having a taste of heaven, two of my favorite women in one bed. The only thing missing was Sasha’s blonde curls against my cheek. Nandi snuggled into my chest and burrowed her face against my throat.

At first I was content to lay there just like that, but my fingers seemed to have ideas of their own. I slid my palm across Nandi’s back and sought out her bare skin. She didn’t have a stitch on beneath her pajama shorts. I stole a stealthy look at Isisa but found her looking back at me.

Isisa flashed me a drowsy smile. “Go ahead. Just because I’m not always in the mood, doesn’t mean I don’t like to watch.”

“Yeah?”

She reached over and stroked Nandi’s curls back from her face in a loving gesture. “Well… maybe I’ll help you out a little. I bet you and I can make little kitty here positively purr with satisfaction.”

Lord help me, but I’d never been so turned on in my entire life. Or so eager to rise to a challenge.

---

After opening the floodgates to a sexual relationship with all three lionesses, I had to find time to rest. Between their different appetites, work, and spending time together, I spent less and less time at home and ended up bringing Rambo and Ripley along with me more days than not, because it seemed like they’d also bonded with Simba.

Apparently my absences had been noted. I’d barely been home half an hour before my mother texted to let me know she was coming over. Ten minutes later, she arrived at my door with a crockpot casserole in hand.

“I made you dinner,” she announced. “Your food must all be bad.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You haven’t been here to eat it, that’s why. Sergio says you head to Houston a lot.”

My brother, the spy. I should have known.

While she fussed with the food, I pulled down two plates and glasses. Sure enough, the milk in my fridge was past its prime, but I had a brand-new bottle of sweetened iced tea I’d never gotten around to opening. Mom clucked her tongue but didn’t say anything. In her house, tea was made from scratch.

“Sergio says you’ve had trouble at work.”

Sergio said a lot of shit. Enough for me to decide to speak to him with my fists next time we crossed paths. “Nothing I can’t handle. We had some vandalism, but I filed a police report and they have a patrol car drive by every night.”

“Mr. Dupont is nice?”

“Yeah, I guess so.  He’s a decent guy for a man with too much money to spend. Fair. Doesn’t mistreat us and keeps his word.”

“Sergio called him strange.”

“Strange is an understatement.” The man lived like a recluse. Or maybe a playboy. His daytime hours were booked solid, and any of our meetings always happened past dusk, usually over dinner.

“Fine then, enough about your employer. Tell me about this woman you are bringing over, instead.”

Her choice of conversation shift didn’t seem any easier than talking about Mr. Dupont.

“Actually, I’m bringing three.”

“Three? Oh, does she have friends in need of a place to enjoy the holiday? That’s fine. The more the merrier I always say.”

I hesitated. Did I own up to the fact that I was dating three women in a single, polyamorous relationship or did I do as Sasha suggested and pass the other two off as friends?

Not only would I be dishonest to my mother, but I’d be misrepresenting a relationship with two amazing women. Nandi’s shy smiles and Isisa’s cheerful laughter deserved to be shared with the rest of the Castillo clan without a lie.

“No, I mean I am bringing three women over who are in a relationship with me.”

Mamá stared at me, looking down her nose in a way I’d seen a million times over the years. “That is not funny, Esteban.”

“I’m not making a joke.”

“What do you mean you are seeing three women?”

“You asked me to go out and meet a woman. I did. Three of them, and they’re all amazing. Sasha is a doctor, Isisa is a lawyer, and Nandi writes bestselling novels.” Like ripping off a fucking bandage, I let it spill without holding back a single aspect of what we had, because somehow in the short time since I’d met them all, those three women had come to mean the world to me.

Because in the short time we’d been together, I’d come to realize they cared more about my happiness than Gabriela ever had. They were real and open, baring their relationship and trusting me to see them as people. The ladies, my ladies, had been open from the start about their expectations, save for Sasha’s hesitation to reveal the entire truth at the beginning.

And hell, I understood that. Protecting Nandi and Isisa had taken precedence over providing full disclosure to me, a stranger they’d barely known at the time. They wanted the same things I wanted. The things Gabriela had once claimed to want, too.

And I trusted them to keep their promises.

“Ma?”

My mother clutched her rosary in a white-knuckled, bloodless grip. The color and warmth had drained from her face. “Tell me this is a joke, Esteban. A joke in poor taste.”

“It’s not,” I said in a gentler voice. “I’m dating three of them. It’s a little complicated, but I care about all of them. They’re together too, but they want kids and—”

When she was truly upset with me, she always reverted to speaking Spanish. The language poured out of her all at once. “I didn’t raise you to behave like this, going from woman to woman. What kind of girls could they be? Three of them? It isn’t right. It isn’t normal.”

“Mamá—”

“No. I won’t have this at my table. What kind of example are you setting for your brother, Esteban? What would Samuel think if he were to see this shameful behavior?”

When the rest of her Spanish tirade ended, I replied to her in English. “It isn’t shameful. I care about them, and they care about me. I didn’t set out looking for three women, okay? Now that we’re together, I’m happy. I’m happier than I’ve been in the years since Gabriela left. And if you can’t understand that, then I guess I won’t be coming to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Her expression hardened. Mamá straightened her spine and pushed her shoulders back to stare at me. “You would choose this over your family. Over your own mother?”

“If you won’t give them a chance, then yeah, I guess I’m choosing them instead when it comes to Thanksgiving.”

“This is not how I raised you to be.” She peered down her nose at me.

“You raised me to be a good, honest, and charitable, hardworking man. I like to think you did right since I’m all of those things, but my feelings are what they are, and you aren’t going to change that.”

“It is against the law,” she said, changing tactics.

“No, marrying all three of them would be against the law. There’s nothing that says I can’t be in a healthy physical relationship with multiple people.”

“Ay dios mio.” She leaned against the wall and crossed herself like I’d admitted to fucking my way through a Satanic harem.

In her eyes, maybe I had.

Mamá turned on her heel and stalked to the door, skirts swishing and twirling around her ankles. “Wait until I tell your father.”

---

“Damn.” My father raised his beer bottle and took another sip.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What the hell did you expect me to say? Pick one? Stop doing it? You’re a grown-ass man and you can make your own decisions. Hell, I figure around Christmas when you’re broke from buying them each gifts, you’ll have second thoughts on your own.”

“Says the man who bought a three-thousand-dollar meat grinder.”

He grunted and took another drink. I didn’t rush him, but he spoke up on his own when the bottle was empty. “So, how does that work?”

“How does what work?”

“Do you please them all at once?”

“Are you really asking me to go into detail about my sex life?”

“What? You’re a Castillo. We pride ourselves on our stamina. When I was your age, I could have handled three just fine.” He paused, considered his boast, then added in a mutter, “Don’t tell your mother I said that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

In the hours since our argument, I’d already received calls from Sergio, Samuel, and Selene about our mother’s irrational antics over my love life, and finally, she’d made good on her threat to send my father.

And as usual, Pops secretly had my side.

“Your mother will calm down.”

“I somehow doubt that. She’s all worked up.”

He shrugged in the casual way of a man who knew his wife of four decades, and grinned. “True, but she’ll get over it. Trust me. I’ll talk to her. You know she wants you home with the family for the holidays.”

“Then she needs to understand I won’t put up with any disrespect against my ladies. If she can’t be civil, I won’t be there. End of story.”

“Understood. And, for what it’s worth, I agree with you, Stebi. You know, of all the kids, you’ve always made us the most proud—”

Stebi. No one but a few of my cousins and Ma usually called me that. My father hadn’t used it since I left for boot camp. “Pops, you—”

He held up a hand. “No. Let me finish. The rest of your siblings have done great things with their lives, but you’ve done so much more. You sacrificed years of your youth serving this country, years other men spend drinking with their boys or living at home. You took over this business and you turned it into something I could have never accomplished. Multi-million-dollar contracts and deals with billionaires. When this business started, it was only seven of us building homes in little rural towns, hoping to have enough money left over to put food on the table for our families. Papá Sergio believed in me when he handed me the money to start this business, believed we could do this on our own. Now look at us. More than we could have ever dreamed of having.”

Tension squeezed my throat, tightening my jaw, and wrapped an iron fist around it. I tried to swallow it down. “You would have gotten there without me.”

He shook his head and pointed to the driveway, where his shiny new Cadillac gleamed beneath the sun. It was lime green, a special paint job he’d had done to resemble a car he drove when he was young. “No. Under me, we made enough to get by. Enough to be comfortable and to meet our needs, but you’ve brought the kind of success that fulfills our wants. That new car out there, it’s because of you that I drive it. The BMW your mamá always wanted, we have that now because of your help. Your sister has everything she needs at college. We go on family vacations. We tour the world. You sent us to Madrid last year for two weeks, you remember that? I enjoy these final years in retirement because of you.”

Blinking didn’t help. My eyes still burned. “Pops…”

“And now, your mother who loves you so much, is judging you for living your life in a way she doesn’t like, despite all the good you’ve done.”

In the past, Ma had forgiven me for a dozen ridiculous mistakes. I’d broken windows with baseballs, dinged her brand-new car against a tree when I was in high school, broken the dishwasher by using the wrong soap, and throughout it all, she always hugged me and forgave.

“She’ll come around.”

“I know she will, but it doesn’t change that we have done you a terrible disservice. Your mother and I have kept something from you a long time, because we never thought it mattered. It never mattered to me, so we didn’t bring it up.”

“Bring what up?”

He shifted in his seat and took another long drink. The humorous mood of the evening had faded. My stomach felt heavy, chest tight. Why wouldn’t my father make eye contact with me?

“Your mamá was pregnant with you when she and I met. Didn’t bother me none, though she took some convincing to believe that. I just knew from the moment I saw her, she was the woman for me. I had to have her, and I figured that meant the whole package. You and her both. Eventually, she gave in to my charms and married me.”

Everything I’d ever known about my life changed in the course of a few seconds. I wanted to be furious at him. Wanted to rage and sweep the phone from the cradle to make a call to their house.

Instead, I was numb. My dad wasn’t dad. Mom had lied to me. Forty-two years of my life wrapped in fucking falsehoods because no one ever thought I deserved to know. “So you’re saying you’re not—”

“As far as I’m concerned, you are my son.”

“Of course you are. Sorry, that’s not what I meant.” The conversation needed more than beer. I abandoned my seat long enough to grab two glasses and a bottle of tequila from the cabinet—one I’d been saving for a long time—then dropped back down beside him.

“You’re angry with me. And you have a right to be.”

“No,” I said after a moment, furrowing my brow and focusing on the bottle in my hands. “I’m not mad. I’m confused. I feel kind of betrayed that nobody figured in all this time I should be told there’s another man out there sharing half my DNA, but I’m not angry.”

We drank for a while in silence, neither of us speaking while the truth rattled around in my brain and I gave it time to sink in. On the third glass, my tongue loosened enough to ask questions. “So, uh… what happened?”

He shrugged. “When she and I met, she was trying to figure out how to tell her family what she’d done, and didn’t want to admit she’d gotten into trouble.”

I hesitated, torn between wanting to know more and casting it all aside. I had a father right in front of me.

Did I need to know anything more? Did it matter who he had been?

Succumbing to curiosity, I sucked in a breath and asked a single question. “Do we know anything about him or who he is?”

“She knows his name, but he’s nobody to me. Just someone she once knew in Puerto Rico, and nobody special. The bastard vanished on her. They’d only been together a few months before he did his disappearing act. But it never mattered to me. His loss was my gain. He missed out on raising a great kid. And I’m proud of you, Stebi. Everything you’ve done with your life. It doesn’t matter to me if you want three women as long as you do better for them than the hijo de puta I inherited you from.”

I nodded. “I will.”

Pops nodded, too. The drinking resumed in silence, both of us sitting with tears in our eyes. My blurry vision made the room shimmer around me and distorted my view of the only man in my fucking life who had ever mattered. “Treat them good. Always treat them good and make them feel loved.”

That other guy, the dude who abandoned my mother, fuck him. This was Pops. I repeated that in my head a few times, making it an internal mantra. “I will.”

And then I didn’t need to repeat it anymore, because it was true. He was my dad, and no one else ever could hold a candle to him.