“Hang on.” My voice rises. “Do you guys think I shouldn’t go? Why?!”
There’s a brief pause. Josh sets his plate aside. “I think that you’re so driven by your work, that you don’t consider what makes you happy,” he says diplomatically. “By anyone’s standards, you’re already incredibly successful. There’s no need to relocate.”
“But I could be more successful,” I argue.
Zack throws his hands up. “Of course you could!” He says, exasperated. “Even if you were the biggest brand in the world, you could still be more successful.” He shakes his head. “Where does it end? You want your stuff being made by strangers in big factories? You wanna be buying cheap materials and underpaying people to get to the top?”
I’m offended. “No! I would never—”
“You’d never what? Prioritise your job over people? Then why do you want to uphaul your whole life to make some more money, when you’re doing just fine here? You haven’t got anyone or anything in America!”
I’m shocked. Zack is usually so laid-back. I don’t think we’ve ever properly argued before. “So?” I demand. “What do I have in London?”
“Us,” he says simply. “You’ve got a home. A gorgeous flat. A great production team. Smoking-hot neighbors.”
I narrow my eyes. “So you think I should stay just because you want me to. Nice, Zack.”
Zack sighs. “L, I know you. You don’t like meetin’ new people. If you move to America, you ain’t joining clubs or going to parties. I don’t like the thought of you holed up in some tiny flat in New York, working yourself to death. No friends, no family, just… ignoring everything good in your life.”
I can suddenly see it so clearly: me working my thirties away, too shy to make new friends, too lost in my work to talk to people. I’d slowly lose touch with the guys until we never spoke at all. I can picture myself in a few years’ time, hunched over my desk at three in the morning, listening to the guys’ voices from all the way across the ocean as they talk about some new girl they’re seeing.
Shockingly, tears burst up in my eyes. I blink them back furiously. “But this is all I’m good at.” I say. “I’m good at this, Zack. I am so good at my job.”
“You are,” he says, looking at me levelly. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
I throw up my hands. “I don’t know how to do anything else!” I exclaim. “I know how my business works. I know what I need to do to keep improving it. I have a plan that I’ve been checking off since I was eighteen. If I don’t follow it, then… anything could happen!”
The guys are all still for a few seconds, stunned into silence.
“You’re scared,” Zack says, watching me.
“Yeah, I’m scared. When I was a teenager, my whole life was taken out of my control. I was doing fine, enjoying school, living my life — and then one guy decided to make up a lie about me, and I lost all my friends. Everyone hated me. People decided it would be fun to hurt me. It wasn’t my fault, I did nothing wrong, and I had to live with the consequences of someone else’s actions. It wasn’t fair.” I shake my head, my chest burning. “But I let it fuel me. And now I’m living a better life than those people. I got better grades than them. I’m making more money than them. I’ve been in magazines. On podcasts. I’m going to collaborate with Anna Bardet at New York Fashion Week. They acted like I was worth nothing, but I knew they were wrong, and when I go to my ten-year reunion, they’re all going to see that. I’ll be better off than all of them, because I was smart, and I worked hard, and I stuck to my damn plan.”
I break off, breathing hard. The boys all look at me for a few moments. Then Josh slides closer to me, cupping my cheeks with his warm, dry hands.
“You want to control everything,” he says quietly, his eyes boring into mine. “But you can’t, Layla. You need to learn to let go of your plan and just… live sometimes. It’s okay.”
Luke nods behind me. “Until you trust another person to be on your side, you’ll never find a partner. You’ve never found a boyfriend because you’ve never found a man you trust will love you and take care of you.”
I swallow. “I thought it was because I didn’t know how to date.”
Luke sighs. “Layla, this was never about you being awkward on dates. People with far less social skills than you get married every day. You never got a second date, because every time you sat down with a guy, you were on the defensive. They could tell that, no matter what you were saying with your mouth, you had absolutely no interest in opening up to them.”
I bite my lip, fear rising up in me. I don’t know what to do.
The guys are right; I don’t really want to move countries. But the thought of staying here with no clear career path is terrifying. If I’m not always pushing for more, who knows where I might end up? “I don’t know how to let go,” I whisper. “I’m so used to having to fight for everything.”
“Do you want to try?” Luke asks in my ear, taking my wrists and pinning them back onto his thighs. Heat blooms in me, and I lean back into him, pressing my cheek into his soap-scented shirt. He presses a kiss to the base of my neck, his gaze flicking up to Zack. “Didn’t you have a lesson planned out for her? Now seems like an ideal time.”
Zack has been sitting silently, watching me, tugging on the chain around his neck. Now he sits back. “You like that?” He asks, pointing at Luke’s lap.
I look down. “Sitting on Luke’s knee? I bet he’ll let you try, if you ask nicely.”
“He means this,” Luke says, tightening his grip. “Do you like me holding you down?”
A breeze suddenly washes in through the open balcony window, and the shiver that runs through me is practically convulsive.
All three men laugh out loud. I blush.
Zack nods, satisfied. “I want to try something with you. Hang on a sec.”
He slips off the bed and walks to the wardrobe. I hear him rummaging around, and then he appears a few seconds later, holding a black bundle. “Here. What do you think of these?” He shows me a handful of strips of glossy black fabric, about as wide as my hand, probably a metre long each.
I touch one. “What are they?”
Zack hands one to Luke. “Care to demonstrate?”
“Gladly.” Luke takes the fabric and wraps it a few times around my wrist. Then he loops the ends around his hand and tugs my arm to the headboard, tying my wrist loosely to the bedpost.
I frown. “What—”
Before I can finish my sentence, Josh leans forward and tugs down the front of my shirt, burying his face in my chest. I choke and squirm as he licks a hot line down my ribcage, but the movement just tugs at the fabric holding me in place. I can’t move. I’m completely powerless as Josh pulls my cool breast into his hot mouth, looking up at me through his lashes.
“Y-you want to tie me up?” I gasp, twitching on Luke’s knee.
“You think you’d like that?” Zack asks, his voice gruff. “You mentioned wanting to try it before. Dunno if you were just kidding, but it could be good for you.”
“That’s your lesson?!” I sputter. “Zack, what the Hell?!”
He shrugs. “I want to see you give up control for a bit. You’re tightly strung, lass, and I want to unwind you. Let us handle everythin’.”
“I-is being in control a bad thing?” I ask, flinching as Luke slides a hand between my legs. My head tips back. “God.”
“Of your business? No. Of your life? Usually not. But in relationships?” Zack nods. “Aye. It can be a bad thing, if you refuse to let go of it. You’ve done great at opening up emotionally with us recently, but that really ain’t the crux of the problem, is it?” He smooths a palm down my hair, watching as I tense slightly. “It’s in the bedroom you get all knotted up. I think this is your last line of defence. If you learn to give up your body — not just to anyone, mind, but to people you actually trust — I think it’ll be good for you.” He tilts his head, looking at me. “You haven’t got to, of course. But d’you reckon you’d enjoy it?”
“I…” I look between the three of them, panting slightly. My heart is suddenly hammering in my chest. Josh flutters a kiss over my sternum as Luke slips his hand under the waistband of my pants. I tug at the restraints and moan. “Yes. I’d enjoy it.”
Zack grins. “Great. Then we’ve got a lesson to start.”
