“Gabe!” She was the only one who called him that. Gabriel had tried early on in their friendship to get his name to stick, but Morgan had never met a challenge she didn’t love and he’d eventually resigned himself to the nickname. Not that he would ever let the members of his board know that.

“Reece let you pick up the phone?”

There were a few things Gabriel was very good at, and one of them was picking up on the subtle hints that said a pretty little sub was right at the edge of her pleasure. Morgan had that telltale breathiness in her voice and, despite the exhaustion that had settled deep in his bones some time in the last ten years, the stirring of arousal made his muscles tighten and his blood heat. He hadn’t called her for this.

He had called her because the fucking interview was running on the TV like a loop, and he couldn’t talk to a single one of his business colleagues about it. They would have called Emerson Laurent a whole slew of names, then laughed about how the liberal elite was throwing a temper tantrum or some shit like that. But he wasn’t in the mood for dismissal. He wanted someone to challenge him, to tell him if there was any truth to the words Laurent had spoken in her hasty interview after running out of the library. Maybe she had been right, him thinking he ran the world, but he knew she had run off into the media circus because of what she had seen.

What he had seen in her eyes.

She wanted him. It. The submission he offered. And she didn’t want to admit it.

“He likes an audience,” Morgan said, an undeniable note of pleasured humor in her words, and Gabriel amended his earlier plan. He wasn’t going to get any real answers out of Morgan until Reece was done for the night. “You know that.”

“More likely that you want to push his buttons,” Gabriel said. “Are you trying to get in trouble?”

“I would never.” The last syllable caught on a moan, and Gabriel shifted in the leather chair, angling for comfort that was most definitely out of reach. It wasn’t just the soft whimper that had him craving something sinful. He had access to beautiful women in every major city, if he wanted them. But since Reece had brought Morgan into their world of power and play, a woman who saw beyond his empire and treasure, Gabriel had found himself craving…connection.

And that was dangerous fucking territory.

Because the moment someone saw below the carefully constructed life he’d built was the moment he became vulnerable, and Gabriel had sworn to himself a lifetime ago that he would never be vulnerable again.

Still, Morgan’s enduring light, the way she so easily connected with everyone she met, how tirelessly she worked to do good in a world he had come so close to burning to the ground—it had left him aching in new and entirely unwelcome places. Like the empty space behind his ribs. If there was anyone who could tell him the truth about Laurent’s interview, what she meant, all wrapped up in seeing him moments before, it would be Morgan.

Gabriel heard a muffled sound on the other end of the phone, then Reece’s voice came over the line. Since they’d opened their club together, along with the five other of their friends who made up the Sinclair Seven, Gabriel had become all-too-adept at recognizing the way each of them took up their Dom persona. Not that it was a costume, at least not for him. It was innate and true to the nature of him, the call to be in control—of everything. Because he liked the after part, too, the caring part. Deeper, quieter, a version no one really knew, the need to protect. Emerson Laurent would have known that, if she had stuck around.

Reece’s voice was low and gruff, the true mountain man he had become in the last few years, and Gabriel nearly groaned aloud at the sound of Morgan’s whimpers following each pointed, promised command.

“Do you want to stay on?” Reece asked. “She likes an audience.”

“Funny,” Gabriel said, though his own voice seemed to have dropped an octave since first making the call. “She said the same thing about you.”

“That’s because she likes to stir up trouble.” Reece murmured something to Morgan that Gabriel couldn’t quite make out, and that familiar pang beat against his chest, angry and insistent. But he hadn’t gotten this far in his life and his career without having a will of fucking iron, and he pushed the feeling away. It would be back. It always came back.

“Last time she stirred up trouble, I had to come in and rescue you both,” Gabriel said absently, thinking back to the previous summer, when Morgan and Reece had found themselves embroiled in a senatorial scandal that involved environmental terrorism and cover-up. It had been the catalyst for the two of them to finally admit the feelings that had been growing, and Gabriel had eventually slipped away, because Reece could give Morgan a life he’d never be able to share.

“Rescue me now,” Morgan said on the other end of the phone, her voice coming through as if on speaker. “He’s got me all tied up.”

Of course he did. Reece loved playing with his subs, taking them to the edge and holding them there until they were shaking and falling apart in his arms. They did all that tantric and slow-moving stuff, which Gabriel could admit the appeal of when he saw Morgan flushed and panting, but which otherwise took way too long. He was a man of action, of rough, intense pleasuring, of plundering and control.

Still.

“Did you do something to deserve being tied up, little one?” he asked, absently playing with a glass paperweight on his desk for something to do other than unbuttoning his slacks. “Surely Master Reece has a reason for pinning you down.”

“No…” Defiant. Challenging. Hot as fuck. He liked it when his subs made him work for the submission, when they held out until they couldn’t hold out a moment longer. He wanted to break them down and build them back up, one touch at a time.

What would Emerson Laurent be like in bed?

The other question that had been plaguing him all this time. The one he absolutely could not give voice to, because getting caught up in her, the woman who had successfully run candidates against the ones he supported, who was vocal and outspoken about the role of the everyday person, working to serve their country, and about the danger of wealth inequality, would be about the dumbest possible decision he could make.

He still wanted to, though. To know, to confirm what he thought he had seen in her eyes before she had run. To see for himself just how passionate she could be about something other than politics.

“No?”

“I touched myself in the shower this morning,” Morgan admitted, her voice breathless and edgy. When Morgan gave in to her sub side, she lost some of her innate softness, and the sharp edges made Gabriel want her all the more. Not as much as usual, though, not when her moans got caught in the memory of Emerson’s soft gasp from across the room. Emerson. “He caught me with my fingers buried in my pussy.”

The image was nearly enough to make Gabriel spill in his pants. Or maybe it was the memory. This wasn’t the first time he’d played third to Morgan and Reece’s depraved games, but each time brought him closer to an edge he’d never be able to climb back from. The last thing he should be doing was bringing the complicated and damning political hotshot into his fantasies.

“And did you stop after he caught you?” Gabriel asked, enjoying every hitch of Morgan’s breath that indicated Reece was very much taking his time with her tied-up body. “Or did you keep going?”

“I wanted to come…” she admitted. “I didn’t want to stop.”

“So you came all over your fingers in front of him… No wonder he has you tied up, little one. Someone should teach you a lesson.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Reece said. “What do you think, Gabriel, should I turn her pretty ass red? Or should I tell her not to come all night?”

Morgan loved to come. She was always chasing the next high, mountain tops and new adventures, daring orgasms.

“Why not both?” he asked, finally, finally giving over to the urge to press his hand against his throbbing cock. It didn’t provide the relief he needed in any way, shape or form. Instead, it made him think about palming his cock over the pussy of some sweet, aching little sub before pushing the swollen head inside. A very specific sub. He loved that moment when the tip of his cock was engulfed by the warmth of her, the perfect, all-consuming moment.

Connection.

And there was that fucking word again.

“I do like how you think,” Reece said. “Count for me, baby. Each and every stroke. Then thank Master Gabriel for his help. “

“This isn’t exactly the help I had in mind,” she muttered, just loud enough for Gabriel to hear across the phone, and the comment was immediately followed by a harsh, intense slap to her ass. Then a deep, aching moan, because Gabriel was absolutely being fucking tested right now. Normally, he had no qualms about morality or doing the right thing. He wouldn’t have gotten to where he was right now in the world if he did. But falling for his best friend’s girl— that was like watching the castle he’d built crumble into a pile of playing cards. And maybe some of that had to do with Emerson Laurent’s little fucking press conference.

“Take the punishment, Morgan,” Gabriel said, because which was worse, his best friend’s girl or his political enemy? “Be so good for him. Let him mark you.” He could picture the swollen globes of her ass, so fucking tight from all the working out and climbing she did, and his balls tightened and his cock throbbed. He’d long stopped trying to figure out why he needed to lay his mark on the women who were in his bed. If they liked it, and they did, what did the why matter?

Only it wasn’t his mark on Morgan’s skin right now. It was Reece’s. And it would always be Recce’s.

“You should feel how wet she is, Gabriel,” Reece growled, his voice coming through strained and intense. Gabriel could relate. “She loves being told what to do.”

He’d been in the submission and power practice long enough to know about pain and why so many people enjoyed the balance, but he’d never considered himself any kind of masochist. Until now. Until he could hear Morgan whimpering just on the other side of the phone, while he sat in his office, alone, wondering whether to loosen his belt. And still he couldn’t stop himself.

“How does she taste, Reece?” he asked, because in for a fucking penny.

“Like fucking heaven,” Reece said. “Like she was made for my touch.”

What would that be like, to know someone was matched just for him, cosmic puzzle pieces in the universe with a thousand wrong fits? He’d never thought about it before, and now he only grew poetic and maudlin when Morgan was about to come two thousand miles away. And he used to have such good survival instincts.

“Take her there,” Gabriel said. “I’m catching a flight out tonight, so I have to go.” He didn’t have to go. He paid a private jet company an exorbitant amount of money to leave on his schedule, but if he stayed on the phone with Reece and Morgan for one more second, he might just fucking lose it. His control. His grip on reality. He was already fantasizing about the woman who’d ruined so many of his plans. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And before either of them could respond to his abrupt goodbye, Gabriel hung up the phone and tossed it onto his desk. Outside, a light snow was starting to fall on the city and he briefly wondered if he could use it as an excuse to stay away, from Montana, from the one place he’d ever called home. But he’d promised Reece that he’d be there, and to the few people Gabriel was loyal, he was loyal to a fault. Plus, he kind of needed someone to tell him the truth. Someone who cared enough to let him know if he had taken things too far, played the game without caring about the rules for too long. Emerson Laurent could do it without breaking a sweat.

He'd been through harder things in his life than falling for a woman he had no right to want, he was sure of it. He just couldn’t quite remember when. As for Emerson, Montana was a world away from DC. No chance he’d see her before he got back. And maybe by then, he’d actually know what to say.