“Yes, yes it was,” I said, and my voice was breathless and happy.

Some small sound made me turn my head. Domino had moved farther away from the bed; Nathaniel had his eyes closed, body straining against the ropes, as he fought for his own control. It was Jade kneeling in the pillows at the head of the bed, tears shining on her face.

I sighed, and lay there for a second, not wanting to go to her, because there had been other times with Domino, or Nathaniel, where I’d gotten some of the rougher foreplay that I liked, and Jade had freaked. She had so many triggers that reminded her of her abusive ex-master, and most of those triggers tended to be sex that I enjoyed.

J.J. looked down at me, and I didn’t try to hide the look in my eyes. “Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, not your fault.”

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.” I got up so I could go and comfort the other woman in the bed, but honestly, I didn’t want to. It wasn’t that I was unsympathetic. It was that I’d been sympathetic for months and months. She wouldn’t go to therapy unless I went with her, and I’d told her, no, therapy was an inner journey and had to be walked alone, and besides, you weren’t honest if other people were in the room. I’d finally found a therapist who specialized in domestic abuse survivors, and I’d gone with her, but she had made it all about how we weren’t getting along, so it turned into couples counseling. I’d tried to bring up the abuse she’d suffered from her ex-master, and all Jade had wanted to talk about was how to make her and me a better, more workable couple. I finally told the counselor that since I was already engaged to three men, I didn’t really see how a girlfriend who didn’t like men that much was going to fit into my life. It’s not often you see a really good psychiatrist stumped, but she didn’t have a comeback for that.

Jade had cried and tried to get me to go back to the counselor with her, but I had stood firm, so since I wouldn’t go and hold her hand, she wouldn’t see the counselor. Jade wasn’t ready to deal with her past. She was so broken, but that wasn’t the problem; Nathaniel had been broken when I met him. The difference was that Nathaniel had been willing to work his shit, to try to get better, but Jade wouldn’t help herself get better. She just wanted to cling to me, and to Domino to a much lesser extent, and be afraid. If I’d been in love with her I’d have been more patient, but I so wasn’t in love with her, as I crawled over the bed to dry her tears. I fought to keep my feelings off my face.

Nathaniel made a small sound as I crawled even with his face. I looked down at him, and he whispered, “Love you.”

“Love you more.”

“Love you mostest,” he said.

I smiled and leaned over for a kiss. His lips tasted and felt so right. I was surprised when I drew back that there was lipstick on his mouth, faintly, but there. I’d have thought it had all been worn away by now.

I stroked his hair, the side of his face, so that he leaned his face into my hand like a cat will, to rub against your skin and mark you as theirs, and I was his, so much his. But I was also Jade’s, or she wanted me to be. I looked at her huddled against the headboard, crying, and left my wonderful boy for later, after I’d handled the crisis at hand.

My breast ached as I moved over the bed; just the movement of the breast itself made it hurt more, and it was a wonderful reminder of J.J.’s mouth on my body. I liked the pain as I crawled over the bed, but the happy endorphins were fading as I let Jade wrap herself around me. It took everything I had not to recoil away from her, or be angry at her. I’d talked to my own counselor about Jade, but could only talk about my issues with the situation. Jade wouldn’t talk to anyone about herself, except me and a few others here, like Envy, but we were her friends, her lovers, and the damage she was suffering from was above our pay grade. This was professional-level broken, and none of us were professionals at fixing it.

J.J. came and helped me comfort Jade. J.J. was able to talk and soothe better than I could, because she didn’t have the emotional baggage I was fighting through, so the two of us got her calmed down. I probably would have given in and done the sex just the way Jade wanted it, though honestly, it didn’t appeal to me, but J.J. helped us come to a compromise.

We used Nathaniel’s body for the “pillow” to prop Jade up high enough for oral sex. She put her red silk nightie back on, but it was actually very brave of her to be willing to lay her nearly naked lower body across his groin. On the other hand, she was getting oral sex from not one but two women—like I said, a compromise.

Jade was only comfortable with her bits pointing toward Domino’s side of the bed, but J.J. was naked, too, so I thought there’d be a problem from her about Domino seeing her, but there wasn’t.

She said, “I dance nearly nude sometimes; you deal with the issue, or it hurts your performance.” She said it in a tone that made it clear that she didn’t let anything mess with her performance.

So, J.J. lay on the bed with the back of her naked body pointed to Domino’s side of the bed; if it bothered her that a strange man was getting to see her most intimate parts, you couldn’t tell it. I liked that a lot.

In fact, J.J. wrapped her hands around Jade’s thighs, and buried her face between her legs with a practiced comfort that I envied. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be that comfortable with another woman. So many men in my life had been such good sports about sharing me with other men, or even interacting with the other men, that I felt it was almost a failing on my part not to be as good a sport myself. If that sounds weird, then so be it; it was how I felt.

Nathaniel lay on the bed, pressed to the white satin bedspread, his hair shining against the white like a red-brown pool, outlining his body and theirs like auburn lace edging some kinky valentine. J.J. lay on the edge of his hair, her nude body like a work of art carved in muscle and the bare swell of hips through her own art. I realized that she had sculpted her body as carefully, with as much love and passion, as any piece of marble had ever been carved by chisel and hand. Her blond hair fell like yellow water around her shoulders, hiding most of Jade’s lower body from the room. Jade lay on top of Nathaniel, most of her body covered by the startling scarlet of the silk, her long black hair spread out behind her turned to the color of raven’s wings and night skies by the white of the bedspread, and the pillow we’d propped under her head, and the red contrast of her clothes, and her own pale skin. None of them were tanned, but with their bodies pressed so close together you could see that Nathaniel was naturally darker. Jade was second palest, with white skin that hadn’t seen the touch of the sun in most of the last few centuries, so that her black hair and fire-colored eyes were all the more shocking, and then J.J. with her milk-white skin to match the yellow hair and the spring-blue eyes. In fact, her hair hid most of what she was doing. I could tell she was doing different things from Jade’s reaction, but could see precious little of the action even kneeling beside them all.

I knew progress was happening, because Jade’s breathing was speeding up, and her eyes were starting to soft-focus. Nathaniel’s arms and legs were straining in the ropes, his eyes fluttering shut, and I realized for the first time that having a silk-clad woman writhing on his groin while another woman ate her out might actually bring him. We hadn’t planned on that, because usually his stamina and control were phenomenal, but this was a new type of scene for him, and new sometimes flipped your switch quicker than you’d planned.