All the credit for the wonderful characters below belongs to JE.

Jenny (JenRar) all the credit for any clarity of thought or writing belongs to you as the beta on this story.

Dina (aydinbydin), I believe you get the credit for this story existing at all.

Chapter 14 – A Little More Pressure

Bobby's POV

Lester left to meet Tank, and I almost felt sorry for the guy, having to go back into the field sporting that massive hard on while I was about to get some relief. Then again, I hadn't been kidding when I told him it would be so much better for him if I wasn't about to come when I saw him the next time. I could keep him right on the edge for an hour before letting him finally come if I could keep my own control firmly in place. The last time I worked him like that, he'd passed out afterward and woken up with a grin the size of which I'd never seen before. It was that image that flashed through my head right before the wet warmth covered my hand. I sat there for a minute, willing my breathing to slow down, and smiled, realizing I'd changed my mind – I didn't feel sorry for Les after all. I was going to take good care of him tonight.

After cleaning up and ensuring no evidence remained of anything I'd just done, I decided to go back to the kitchen and begin working on dinner. Hopefully, that would keep me busy, and if Stephanie woke up, she'd hear me and know she wasn't alone.

I wasn't sure what she might want to eat. Usually when she tied one on, she wanted her "cure," which consisted of salty french fries and a large Coke over ice. I called Ella and asked if she had any Coke around. She said she kept some on hand for Stephanie, and when I confirmed that's exactly who I needed it for, she brought me two cans. She actually offered a six-pack, but I only took two cans to keep from having leftovers of the syrupy drink in the apartment. We kept popcorn around, and if I had to, I could cook some of that and put some extra salt on it.

Realizing I had a version of her cure ready if she needed it, I decided to just move forward with a normal dinner and invite her to join in if she wanted to. I figured it might make her self conscious to think that I'd modified what we were eating to make it hangover friendly, so with that thought in mind, I whipped up a pot of marinara sauce. I wasn't Italian, but I had learned a thing or two from my time in Mrs. Plum's kitchen, and I was eager to try out my new recipe.

I was just throwing in the last of the fresh basil when I heard Steph begin to stir. I moved to the edge of the kitchen and watched as she stretched her arms over her head and rolled over to her back.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," I said softly in case she had a headache.

She twisted her head so that she could see me and then gave me the sweetest smile. I didn't need anything else to make this one of my top ten moments ever. My apartment was filled with delicious smells, Lester would be home in an hour or so, totally ready for anything sexual I wanted to dish out, and now the woman I most wanted to be with was comfortable enough to rest while I was around and just looking at me made her smile.

"Would you like a Coke?" I asked, figuring it might be helpful to try and cut off her symptoms before they hit her hard.

Her smile doubled in size, and she slowly got up, waiting a minute after sitting before attempting to stand and move into the kitchen.

I wiped down the area where I'd been chopping and lifted her up to sit on the countertop before handing her two Tylenol caplets and a big glass of Coke over ice.

She made a slight face over the pills, but took them anyway.

I waited to give her a chance to drink half of her beverage before attempting to talk. "How do you feel?"

She seemed to consider the question for a moment. "I'm still a little off balance, and I do have a little bit of a headache, but I don't feel like I'm out of control, so that's a good thing."

I let her take another drink before pushing a little to ask, "Were you drinking to forget about today?"

"No," she responded quickly enough that I felt it was sincere without being defensive.

I waited for a minute, hoping she would tell me why she'd had so much to drink in the middle of the afternoon so that I didn't have to hound her just to satisfy my own curiosity.

"Lula and I were talking about something kind of out there and eating Connie's chocolate stash. Then she pulled out a bottle from Connie's other desk drawer and offered me a drink. At the time, it seemed to fit with the conversation, so I only had one cup, but it was a big cup and straight Jack Daniels, so I'm thinking it was a little more than I should have had," she explained, her face turning slightly pinker with nearly every word.

I brushed her hair away from her face so she would look up at me. Once I was sure I had her attention, I said, "There's nothing wrong with having a drink with a friend every so often, Steph."

"Yeah, but I usually make sure I have a ride home and somebody to watch over me when I'm going to get tanked. I didn't plan it, and I have a vague memory of telling Lester I just needed some fresh air and then I'd be good to drive myself back." She shivered, as though how close she came to doing something stupid had crossed her mind. I didn't think she needed me to tell her that driving would have been a huge mistake, so I kept my mouth shut.

"What kind of conversation were you two having that required chocolate and whisky?" I blurted out, hoping a change of topic would put her more at ease.

If anything, she looked more embarrassed than before.

"Lula's been researching things in Cosmo, and she was sharing some of it with me," she finally offered.

"Was it a quiz or a research article?" I asked, hoping she would share enough that we could find a way to laugh about whatever it was. Everything in Cosmo wasn't bullshit, but some of their sex articles were a bit on the farfetched side. I was hoping this would turn out to be one of those kinds of discussions.

"A research article," she replied, looking down and bringing one leg up to cross over her knee.

I decided she might talk a little more freely if I wasn't staring at her, so I picked up my spoon to stir the sauce and asked, "What was it researching?"

"Non-traditional relationships," she replied quickly.

I must have been on to something by keeping myself busy working instead of watching her, so I started pulling out ingredients to make a salad and figured I could chop as I talked.

"Any specific approach in particular?" I asked, washing a cucumber.

"The part she showed me was about threesomes," she spoke much softer to reply.

I had to wash the knife after dropping it at her response. "So it was about sex?"

"No, not that, but they used a word…trinogomy, I think. When three people are in a committed relationship with each other exclusively." While she spoke, I could feel my heart rate increasing.

My mind was spinning as I tried to come up with a decent response.

She let me off the hook for that by saying, "Do you think it's possible for three people to be together without there being jealousy between them?"

"Sure," I quickly replied. "I mean, if they're all honest and up front from the very beginning about what they're going to do, then there's no reason for jealousy. The commitment is to each other, so as long as they honor that, I would think some basic ground rules would make everything easy to manage."

"But how do you get to a point where you say, I think I like two people and I can't pick which one I like more, so I'm going to date them both – together?" she asked.

"Maybe that's not how it begins. Maybe there's already an established couple, and they know something is missing in what they have until they meet the one person that they think could complete them both, and that's how it gets started," I offered, basically laying out how Les and I felt.

"Maybe," she replied, before getting quiet for a while.

I continued washing lettuce and pulling it apart until she spoke once more.

"Hypothetically speaking," she began, letting me know this was about to get interesting. "You and Les as an example…"

"What about me and Les?" I asked after she got quiet for a little too long. I wanted to keep this conversation moving, so I couldn't let her get stuck in her head and chicken out.

"Well, you guys have been together for a long time. Have you ever wondered…" The sentence seemed to fade there. She was so close to asking the specific question I wanted to answer, but I didn't want to assume and give her too much information.

"Wondered what?" I kept her in the hot seat.

"Have you guys ever had a third person with you?" she blurted out, staring at her knees.

I began washing the tomatoes, careful not to look at her. "Early on, when Les and I were still figuring out what we were, we picked up a couple of people at bars for a one night stand. It wasn't really my thing, because I don't like sex without some kind of emotional involvement. And Les...he didn't like it the way he thought he would because he had to hide parts of himself and it ended up putting him more on edge. So we quit trying."

"But that's just sex. Have you ever thought about expanding your relationship to include someone else?" she pushed.

And there was the million dollar question. How did I answer this? Did I say, as a matter of fact we have and you are the lucky woman we want to devote ourselves to? Or did I go for something more subtle and risk her not understanding what I meant? Damn, I wish Lester were here, because he was much better at reading her to know how much to say. Finally, I realized I needed to buck up and say something.

"Early on, no," I told her honestly. "When Les and I first got together, we were too messed up to risk anybody else getting hurt by our demons. But being with him has definitely mellowed me, and I think I've had the same effect on him. So, now…yeah, now I think it could be possible." As I finished talking, I heard the sound of a key in the apartment lock and tried to hide my relief that Les was here to participate in this conversation.

"But don't you think it would ruin what you two have if someone else was suddenly in the middle of it?" she questioned.

I heard Les come around the corner before he responded, "That would totally depend on who it was."

I smiled at him, feeling like his answer walked the line of subtlety, but still gave her the opening to ask for more information if she really wanted to know.

They made small talk for a minute while I pretended to work on the sauce and start the water for the pasta. I waited, because I knew Les would get the conversation back on track, and he didn't disappoint.

"So, what'd I miss?"

I looked over at Stephanie to see if she would fill him in, but it almost looked as though the idea of beginning the conversation over again was making her ill, so I decided to try letting her off the hook. "Steph read an article about trinogomy today, and we were talking hypothetically about how a relationship could work with three people in it."

I looked over at Les and thought he was beginning to look nervous. I didn't fully understand that, since this was the exact opening we'd been hoping for. It took about ten seconds for him to decide whatever he'd been considering, because I saw him roll his shoulders and relax against the counter next to Stephanie once more.

"So what kind of hypothetical were you looking at?" he asked, trying to jumpstart the conversation once more.

I looked back at Steph, trying to let her know that the ball was now squarely in her court.

It took her several attempts of opening her mouth before she ever got any words out, but she did eventually ask, "Taking sex out of it, how can three people be in a relationship? Sometimes, it's hard enough to get along with one person, and having two partners would just make it twice as hard, right?"

"It would if they were the wrong people. I think when you've got the right partners, getting along isn't the issue," Lester replied.

"Then what is the issue?" she asked, turning the tables on him.

"Some of it would depend on how the triangle came to be. I mean, hypothetically"—he looked at Steph for a minute, as if trying to impress upon her that last word—"Bobby and I have been together for a while, and I don't make any bones about the fact that I love him and I have to have him in my life. Aside from the trust we've got, I need to know there is that person out there that understands my past and knows what to do when I get wound up. I can depend on him to take care of me if I miss the warning signs that I'm too stressed, and I know that in order to function with any kind of effectiveness, I have to have him by my side."

We didn't talk about our relationship much – the need never came up, and we were more action than talk kind of people – but for a conversation we'd never really had, he'd summed up what we were to each other really well.

"But the way we keep each other grounded," Les continued, getting our attention once more, "is by getting aggressive with each other. It's muscle against muscle, hot head against a hotter head. It's necessary, so I wouldn't ever want to change it, but occasionally, we've talked about how it would be nice to have someone around that we could be gentle with, somebody that would soften our lives."

"Why can't you be soft with each other?" she wondered, always curious when faced with something new.

I figured I could answer this one, having thought about it myself. "Sometimes, we are, but it's not as common as us coming together hard and demanding. We're not exactly what I'd call old dogs, but to totally shift how we relate to each other would be hard without something to ease us into it. If we were both gently interacting with a third person, I think some of that might begin to wear off onto how we treated each other as well."

"So this would just be a temporary thing?" she asked, sounding hurt. "I mean, you'd get another person and romance them until you learned how to relate to each other better and then get rid of the extra baggage?"

"Hell no," Lester emphatically announced. "Flirting is one thing, but if we bring somebody into our lives and open up all our shit to them then they aren't getting pushed anywhere. We're a lot of things, but you know us well enough to know that we don't use people."

Steph looked down, obviously ashamed of having thought of us so poorly.

"Hey." I lifted her face so that she would look at us. "You do know us well enough to know that, right?"

"Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it like that," she confessed. "History has taught me that when things are going really well, something horrible is going to happen."

Didn't that just break a guy's heart? This woman, who did so much good for everyone around her, had never experienced that same thing for herself.

"So, hypothetically, if you were in a relationship with two guys, you would always be afraid that eventually they'd push you out?"

"Yeah," she agreed, "Or that they'd decide I was more trouble than I was worth, or that I complicated things too much and they were better off when it was just the two of them."

Les had apparently had enough of the negatives and spun around to hold her face between his palms. "Nobody could possibly be better off without you. You aren't trouble. Life provides that on its own; it's not something that you do. But you'll know you're with the right people when they tell you that the good stuff you bring to them is so great that they don't even consider the hard parts a problem. You are an amazing woman, and anybody that had you in their life and chose to let you go is a bloody fool."

"I don't think I've ever been with somebody that felt that way," she spoke after processing what Les was telling her.

I moved to stand beside Les and put my hand over his on one side of her face. "We do," I assured her, watching as her forehead wrinkled, as though she were attempting to work out a complicated math problem in her head.

"I think…" she started to say, but stopped herself and looked at each of us in turn.

She unfolded her legs that had somehow gotten bent up onto the counter top and began to look like an animal looking for an escape. I wondered if this was about to hurt. If she was going to tell us that, while we were fun to hang out with, there was really nothing about being in a relationship like ours that fit with who she was.

She looked down suddenly, and we pulled our hands away instinctively, knowing she needed a little room. "I think…I need to go home. The booze is gone, but I'm exhausted from…everything, and I need a little time by myself."

"You want me to drive you back?" Les offered.

I thought it was a great idea so he could reassure her that despite our seemingly eager stance in the kitchen, we'd never push her into something she didn't want, and if she only wanted us in her life as friends, we would gladly comply, because we needed to be around her in any capacity.

Her curls moved about as she shook her head no. "My car's in the garage, and I can drive safely now."

We both knew she was right, so arguing with her just to extend the time together would only backfire on us. I stepped back and looked at the stove, realizing the pasta was done and ready to be drained.

"You want to take some dinner home with you?" I offered.

She shook her head no, but stopped herself and leaned over to look at the pots cooking on the stove. "No salad," she bargained.

I immediately found a container suitable for transporting a serving of linguini with marinara. Thank goodness Ella kept this apartment stocked. Tossable containers wasn't something that ever crossed my radar as a must have kitchen item.

She pulled her boots on and laced them up while I got her dinner together and put it in a bag. I met her at the door and held out the small container, hoping her history with her mother would allow her to understand this gift was more than just dinner. She obviously wasn't ready to hear us say anything more specific about what we felt for her, but I could provide food for her that I'd made, and hopefully she'd get the message that way.

Her eyes went to the bag as she took it from my hand and lingered there for a moment, giving me hope that the meaning of this gesture wasn't lost on her.

"Thanks for taking care of me today," she lifted her head to say.

"Anytime, Beautiful, but next time, before you start drinking with Lula, give us a call, and we'll be on standby to get you safely home."

"I'm thinking there won't be a next time," she announced, beginning to smile a little, to my great relief. "I don't like the idea of getting drunk at Vinnie's."

That thought made her shiver, and knowing what went on in his back office made me share that momentary cringe.

"Plus, I'm pretty sure we had enough of Connie's booze that she's going to lock it up so we don't do that again."

"Are we still on for dinner tomorrow night?" I asked, needing to get a commitment from her that she wasn't going to run and hide from us indefinitely.

Her eyes narrowed, and she asked, "What's on the menu?"

Relief flooded my system that she was joking with me. Hopefully, that meant we hadn't scared her off completely. "Tell me what you want, and you'll have it."

"Anything?" she pressed, grinning.

I knew I was going to regret it, but I had given her the opportunity, so I just went with it. "Anything."

"Hmmm..." She pretended to give it some thought. "Can I text you a menu later after thinking it through? I want to be sure I take advantage of having my own personal chef for the night."

I was definitely wrong; there was nothing to regret here. Empty calories and high fat content would totally be worth being called her own personal anything for the night.

"Send me a message whenever you get it worked out, and we'll see you tomorrow."

We leaned in and kissed her cheeks in a gesture we'd done dozens of times over the last month. As we pulled back, she spun around and walked out.

There was a moment or two where we both stood there, staring at the door and not moving.

"Did we just move from the subtle phase to the more direct pressure part?" Les broke the silence to ask.

"I think so," I replied, before adding, "You don't think we moved from the more direct pressure part straight into the scaring the shit out of her, do you?"

He seemed to consider it for a minute before responding. "I don't think so. She took food, and she promised us dinner with her tomorrow, so I think she just needs a little time to figure out exactly what just happened."

"I think I could use the same thing," I confessed. "What the hell just happened?"

"I think our girl just got her eyes opened, and now the ball is totally in her court," he answered, sounding more comfortable with every word.

"Does she like playing ball?" I blurted out.

Les cracked up at my question, so I slugged him in the arm to bring him back to reality. "Maybe not in a traditional sport, but I have a feeling, if she'd let herself go and not worry about what anybody was thinking, she could be great at playing with multiple balls."

The last few words were punctuated with his trademark eyebrow wag, so I slugged him again for good measure.

He frowned and rubbed the spot I'd attacked, "Man, what the hell was that for?"

"I think when you left, I promised I'd be the one to take care of you," I responded, watching his eyes go from playful to heated instantly.

"You did, but I don't think I get the connection between that and you smacking me around," he challenged while toeing off his boots.

"I wasn't smacking you around," I corrected him, staring at his belt until he got the point and started unbuckling it. "I was just showing you who was going to be in charge tonight."

"You feeling the boss vibe?" he teased.

"I'm feeling the vibe that says we'll do this my way or you're welcome to use your hand tonight," I returned, holding back my pleased reaction when his eyes jerked back to me, surprised at my forthrightness.

It took a moment, but he finally said, "Lead on."

There was nothing submissive about Lester, but on rare occasions, he would play along and give up all the control to me. He'd learned a long time ago that when I took over, it was all about pleasing him, so he knew it might drive him crazy, but in the end, it would be totally worth it. I couldn't wait until the time came when I might have the opportunity to try the same thing with Stephanie. I was pretty sure I could please her until she was too exhausted to handle any more.

But right now, she wasn't here, and in front of me was a man whose body I knew as well as my own. I figured the same goal would play out just as well for him.