“But not as good as living with you full time.”
“No, it’s not.”
“At the end of the year is when we get married?”
“Yes. That’s part of the plan now too—Arthur recruits Gus, he has a chance to be a regular member, and at the end of the year when we get married, he becomes our third. If you want. If there’s someone you’d prefer...”
“I’d prefer not to share you.”
“Would another woman be less stressful?”
“Not really. The idea of some sexy woman fucking you with a strap-on isn’t better.”
“Maybe I’d be fucking her with a strap-on,” she protested.
Eric just looked at her. “Nikki, baby, you’re the absolute definition of a power bottom.”
She tried to look affronted, but didn’t manage to smother her laugh.
Eric walked over to the wall and sank down, sitting with his back against it.
Nikolett joined him. A patch of sunlight from the window created a trapezoid of light across their legs.
“Why are we always sitting on the floor?” she asked.
“My back.” He looked at her. “I’m old.”
“You’re not that old.”
“Older than you.” He laced their fingers together. “There is another option, besides Gus, the cookie man.”
“Who?”
“Not really ‘who’ but what.”
“…what?”
“We do what I did for Nyx and Grigoris.”
Nikolett studied him, puzzling it out. “What do you mean?”
“Josephine was never really going to be their third,” Eric said quietly. “I would never have put her in a trinity with people who couldn’t or wouldn’t move to Dublin. Grigoris was a janissary. His trinity would have to be in Ottoman.” Eric shook his head. “I would never have made Josephine move away from Colum.”
“You mean it wasn’t real?”
He shrugged. “Nyx and Grigoris were in love, and they’d been through hell and back. Adding a third would have been a heavy emotional load but they deserved to be married. Not that they wouldn’t have loved and cared for Josephine. They would have. But if she’d lived, I would never have let Josephine marry them.” Eric sighed. “I never talked to them about it, but sometimes I wonder if they know.”
“It’s a loophole,” Nikolett said quietly, still processing the implications. “Because the fleet admiral can form and approve a trinity at the same time. All it takes is your word.”
He nodded. “If an admiral tried it, technically it wouldn’t work because the trinity didn’t—couldn’tif one of them was dead—come to me to be approved.”
“Eric, are you proposing we wait until an unmarried member somewhere dies and then quickly, retroactively say we were in a trinity with them?”
“Yes.”
“That’s…morbid.” But appealing. Very appealing. Horribly so.
“I wouldn’t have to share you.”
