Page 74 of Fourplay & Fatalities

“Because I didn’t want you to feel pressured. I knew if you heard I was prepping for the possibility, you’d feel like you had to do it,” Asa said. “I want you to want it as much as I do. If you don’t, it’s just me torturing you.”

Zane’s sinking heart took flight in his chest. “Oh, that’s…sweet.”

Felix craned his head around to kiss his chin. “Enough stalling, baby. Let’s just do this.”

“Felix is right. Just because they ask doesn’t mean we have to answer,” Avi said, combing his fingers through Zane’s messy curls.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” Asa asked.

“Uh, we accidentally expose that we all get naked together?” Zane said, exasperated.

Felix gave him that soft look they all saved for when Zane was acting irrational. “Look, I know Bev spooked you by being a little too accurate with her tabloid accusations, but that’s behind us. I don’t really care who knows that we’re together,” Felix said. “Do you guys?”

Asa and Avi exchanged confused glances.

“You’re asking us?” Avi asked. “We don’t even care if people know we kill people. Dad’s the one who gets all sensitive about that stuff. We don’t really even have the capacity to care about that.”

Asa snorted. “Considering Dad married our brother, making Aiden our stepfather, I don’t think he has a leg to stand on if our relationship gets out.”

“But then the family knows,” Zane said.

“Oh, please. The family knows,” Felix said. “And if you think otherwise, you’re fooling yourself, baby.”

“There’s knowing and then there’s knowing,” Zane countered. “What if they come after us like my mom said? Like, what if they try to take the twins from us?”

“The only twins they’ll come after are the idiots we married,” Felix promised. “It’s not illegal to be in a poly relationship. And even if it was, we’re Mulvaneys. We don’t go to prison. Prison is for poor people who don’t have dirt on half the sitting members of congress.”

“If you’re not comfortable answering the dirty questions we’ll inevitably get, we can ignore them,” Asa promised. “Or we can just go full sarcasm. God knows we all excel at that.”

Zane nuzzled his face into Felix’s neck, inhaling the scent of lavender and honey, eyes floating closed as Asa and Avi’s hands stroked his back. He didn’t really know what he was afraid of. Felix was right. Mulvaneys didn’t go to prison. It was fucked up and elitist, but it was true. Zane justified it by reminding himself that they were the good kind of billionaires. The ones cleaning up the streets. But sometimes, he wondered.

Finally, Zane lifted his head, taking a deep breath and letting it out. “Fuck it. Let’s just do this.”

“Do you want me to move? For the sake of optics?” Felix asked.

Zane hooked his head over Felix’s shoulder. “No, definitely not. You’re my emotional support kitten. I need to be able to snuggle you.”

“Meow,” Felix said with no inflection.

“We’re late, Lois, just hit the button,” Asa prompted. “Let’s get this over with so we can get on with the fun part.”

“Mm,” Avi said. “If you do let us do…the thing…can I record it? For the…archives?”

Hidden in their safe, tucked beneath wills and trusts, land deeds, passports, and stacks of cash, was a box filled with recordings. They didn’t record all the time, just when they did something particularly dirty or something that turned them all on so much they wanted to go back and relive it again and again. Sometimes, while they reenacted the scenario. If those tapes ever got out, that would be the end of their already tarnished reputations, but they had all agreed it was worth the risk.

Zane’s fingers shook as he stabbed at the go-live button.

“Okay, we’re live. We’re actually doing this. Oh, God. I think I’m gonna puke from nervousness,” he told the camera.

“Dramatic,” Felix murmured, shaking his head with a smile.

Zane plastered his widest, fakest smile onto his face, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hey, everyone. Zane here. Thanks for tuning in to celebrate with me today. And if you’re new, congrats on arriving just in time for what’s either going to be a charming domestic Q&A or my father-in-law’s next PR nightmare. Either way, you win.”

Asa snickered, his hand landing on the back of Zane’s neck, massaging soothingly.

The comments were already coming in fast and furious.

MulvaneyTruthNetwork: Look at his husband’s hand placement. He’s controlling him. He’s probably signaling him what questions he can and can’t answer.